


Hounds

by quietasasleepingarmy



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, John Hamish Watson With A Gun, M/M, Not So Platonic Touching, POV First Person, Panic Attacks, Platonic Touching, Protective John, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-22
Updated: 2016-09-22
Packaged: 2018-08-16 14:47:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8106421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietasasleepingarmy/pseuds/quietasasleepingarmy
Summary: Sherlock enlists John's help with a case that falls far beyond his area of expertise. Post-HLV.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Repost of an old fic, upon kind request. :)
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> **Warnings: This fic contains vivid descriptions of panic attacks, past torture, and sexually abusive scenarios (not between John and Sherlock).**

JOHN

It’s a modest flat in the suburbs. Could afford better, but we wanted to save. The schools in the area are well regarded, and that was important to Mary. Just in case.

  
It’s relevant now, isn't it? Now we can be glad that we had the foresight to consider whether the neighborhood feels friendly to young families (it does), and whether the park is well maintained and well attended by people who look like us.

  
Everyone we’ve met here tells us what a nice place it is to raise a child. They tell us we’ll have to come over for play dates with little Jimmy and Natasha. The fathers wink at me and hint that we might steal a few virile moments of Scotch and football talk, away from the babies and wives.

  
Our street has the lowest crime rate in the greater London area.

 

SHERLOCK

For weeks after I shot Magnussen, I’d wake to his phantom clammy grip, algid like the scales of something toothed that circles just offshore. I’d hallucinate the stench of ocean decay: things severed and cast into the sea.

  
“A woman’s hands?” he’d ask me, over and over and over. All I could muster in these dreams, as in life, was a drugged exhale: the softest possible expression of the blood-tinged scream in my gut.

  
What did he mean? It’s something I’ve yet to deduce. That I am weak? Only a fool underestimates the subtle strength of women. I should know, having been that fool twice now. Expecting women not to retaliate was just one of that man’s fatal mistakes.

  
I should like a woman’s hands.

  
Measures could have been taken to avoid these visitations. I do have exceptional power over what occupies my mind. (I used to, anyway.) But it was never my intention to take the life of another human being. Years of living meticulously (when it came to the big things)—always keeping multiple failsafes in place, or at least, John—did nothing to prevent that fast impulse that bubbled hotly from my heart to to my hands and ended the reign of one Charles Augustus Magnussen. I thought that perhaps I shouldn’t delete that.

  
Six months later, I’ve slept without the presence of sweaty ghosts for an appreciable amount of time. The sheets are cool and dry. Empty. The way they’ve always been.

 

 

“There’s something you’ll have to do in return,” Mycroft recently told me. He was seated in John’s chair, picking at one of Mrs. Hudson’s biscuits. “In order to stay out of prison. Something related to the case that’s gotten you in so much trouble.”

  
“Lady Smallwood’s orders, I presume. Bit hypocritical, seeing as she came to me to begin with.”

  
“Lady Smallwood never asked you to commit murder.” His tone tapered to a brutal point. “This is an opportunity to provide recompense while remaining in London. Or do you want to go to prison? Never to see Dr. and Mrs. Watson again?”

  
“And baby.”

  
He snorted. “Yes. How domestic.”

  
“If you aren’t going to do something useful, like send one of your minions to buy me cigarettes, then you may as well give me the details. I don’t feel like deducing them without the incentive of nicotine.”

  
Mycroft rolled his eyes.

  
“We have reason to believe that Magnussen had multiple informants within the crime underworld. Some can be linked to Moriarty—though they were all eliminated during the course of your little sojourn. All served as spies and were paid regularly for their eyes, ears, and sometimes their ability to direct the news. It’s possible that Magnussen was made aware of assassinations before they occurred, and never informed authorities—instead ran the story before anyone else, with very intimate sources and photography.”

  
“A businessman, indeed.”

  
“We need to know for certain whether or not he obtained some of this information from a heroin mogul called Cosgrove Gentry. This man holds the current monopoly on trafficking from Afghanistan, and occupies a comfortable position that allows him to go untouched by MI6 on one side and terrorist groups on the other.”  
“So why haven’t you shut him down?”

  
“Don’t be naive, Sherlock. We can’t simply “shut down” every smuggler and dealer in the country. These people have their uses, and it's better to keep the most instrumental movers within our circle of trust, so to speak. The last thing we want is for miscreants to band together and go rogue. That’s what causes tube stations to be bombed and ambassadors abducted.”

  
“Ah, yes. No need to consider the bottom feeders who are actually using the drugs, more than likely hooked on a free sample provided by queen and country.”  
Mycroft sighed. I could see his freckled shoulders shift through his suit, and knew exactly what they’d feel like: the elastic of his skin worn thin by the weight of a nation.  
“I would say that I’ve never taken you for an idealist, but that would be disingenuous.”

  
“Just tell me what you want me to do.”

  
“Certainly.” He lifted the bridge of his fingers to his lips, and his eyes took on the roundness they acquire on the rare occasions he experiences a crisis of conscience. Usually, those instances involve me. “Gentry may be in the process of, as I put it, going rogue—allying himself with a group not tolerated by MI6. Evidence was found in Magnussen’s office to suggest that he has state secrets in his possession that could be used to blackmail the British government should an intervention be attempted. I need you to confirm that. Should you choose to accept this assignment, you will infiltrate and claim any sensitive materials.”

  
“Me? Surely there are agents more qualified for that sort of extraction. Not that stealth isn’t an essential part of my own work.”

  
He grinned in that disgusting way that has always led me to mistrust cats. “No doubt. But this isn’t a typical burglary.”

  
“I see.”

  
“No, you don’t.”

  
“No, I don’t.”

  
“Gentry is a homosexual. And a fan of yours. In fact, like so many criminally inclined men of a certain age, he seems to have developed a sexual obsession with you. Quite encompassing, I’m assured. My agents inform me that he regularly employs underfed prostitutes with dark curls and pale skin.”

  
“You want me to seduce him.”

  
“If it isn’t too much trouble.”

  
The stench of blood and brine curled from under certain doors in my mind palace. I suddenly felt very aware of my skin.

  
“How? You’ve said it yourself—hardly my area.”

  
“And you said that sex didn’t alarm you.”

  
“What if I prefer women?”

  
“But you don’t, do you? Even if you did—you’re an excellent actor.”

  
Presented with my silence, he continued: “You have only to procure the documents before providing my agents with a code word, at which time they will covertly extract you from the scene.”

  
“After having arranged for him to meet me? He won’t like that.”

  
“You will contact him yourself and convince him that you have professional questions regarding the heroin trade in London. I’m certain that he will be more than happy to accommodate you.” Despite his tone, his eyes retained their roundness, and his right hand flexed around an invisible tumbler of Armagnac. “This is not an assignment that I relish giving you. But I want to see you alive and out of prison.”

  
“Right. Utility.”

  
The left side of his mouth quirked—a tic that we share. He most likely transferred it to me, subconsciously, when we first abandoned facial expressions that reflect how we feel.

  
“Something like that. Will you do it?”

  
It’s been quiet at Baker Street. It took a sleepless week to track down the man who claimed to be Moriarty’s bereft lover, unwilling to let us forget his “legacy.” Moran, apparently. Almost Morstan.

  
I’ve been over to see the baby. Layla. A whimsical name, but that’s Mary. Or whoever she is. I’ve slouched in their sad sitting room and made faces at the child, who isn’t bad, as children go. Hard to truly scowl at someone who has so much of John playing at the corners of her blue eyes and dimpled grin. And I’ve been told that scowling at infants is frowned upon.

  
The impossible softness of her skin and the warm, clean smell of her always conjures, unbidden, the memory of red fur scented by sun and earth, hard teeth, lolling tongue, and a feeling in my chest not unlike cardiac edema.

  
They brought her over once. Mary handed me homemade bread wrapped in warm cloth. Of all things. I gave it to someone in the Network. John’s smile was absent and he did not quite look at me. He busied himself with the baby, making too many jokes about the various dangerous items she might find to chew on in our sitting room. My sitting room. I wanted to shout, Why can’t you come here alone, just once. There are so many things that only you can unravel—ways people have looked at me, turns of phrase in this or that e-mail. The new lines around my eyes and yours.

  
But I made a vow. The best I can do is leave him alone.

  
“Yes. Give me one month.”

  
Mycroft stood to leave. “You have three.”

 

That night I dreamed I was torn apart and eaten, limb by limb, by a shark.

 

 

JOHN

  
It’s just Layla and me tonight. We agreed that Mary needs her space. She goes to some sort of book group.

  
I get my night, too. Twice a month. I tell her that I’m off to meet Greg, or Stamford, or our neighbor Dan at the pub. Sometimes that’s true. Other times I take the tube into the city and wander around Westminster, trying to shift these seven pounds. If habit sets in and I find myself pacing around my old doorstep, then I’m sure I don’t have anything to say about that.

  
Mary tells me that couples who stay together have outside friends and interests, so we need some time apart. She read it in a book.

  
Layla’s a relatively low maintenance baby. Sleeps through the night, mostly, and when she doesn’t, she’s easily soothed by a bit of a cuddle. After an adulthood spent on battlefields and at crime scenes, it’s a marvel to watch someone develop into a tiny self, replete with likes and dislikes, communicative noises and expressions. Her hair sprouts in cornsilk tufts that I can’t stop twining gently around my fingers. She laughs a lot now. Sometimes we laugh together so hard that tears run down our faces and our stomachs hurt.

  
There isn’t a concrete answer as to why Sherlock and I haven’t seen each other in, what, six weeks? Yeah. We’ve been busy. Flu outbreak at the clinic. Greg told me that there was a pretty big murder case to contend with last month. One that took up a lot of nights and weekends. I smiled and nodded and said, “Oh, good—glad he’s keeping busy, now I’m not there to hide the guns and cigarettes.”

But Greg knows me. He clapped me on the shoulder.

  
“He didn’t text you about it?”

  
“No.”

  
“Ah, well. I’m sure he just didn’t want to get in the way of the. . .routine you’ve got going. He worries about that, you know.”

  
“Sure.” I drained my lager and coughed up a grin. “Yeah. I know he does.”

  
As if what I’ve ever needed from Sherlock was respect for my routine.

  
Layla likes leaves and branches—likes to point at them and sniff the bark if we let her close enough—so I took her to the park tonight to run her tiny fingers over patches of moss on the summer-lush oaks there. She giggled and sniffed her hands. After I took her home and rinsed the sap and debris from her palms, she fell asleep like clockwork, leaving me with a heavy hour to kill before I succumb to bed.

  
Will it be a shitty rerun of _Eastenders_ , or shitty reread of the Tom Clancy novel that somehow seems to be the only book I own? Too late for tea. Could drink that herbal swill, but I just can’t bring myself to do it, though I recommend that all my patients switch to it in the evenings. Oh well. The sense of rebellion as I boil the water and dip the Earl Grey teabag is so strong that it actually elevates my pulse, as if someone were going to catch me and fine me for violating the sacred code of 9 to 5. Pathetic.  
The air has a throb to it tonight. I further my streak of radical behavior by opening the front door to let it spill into the room like a living thing. The scent of grass and flowers. What I wouldn’t trade for car exhaust, curry, formaldehyde.

  
Halfway through my second lager—having given up on the tea—my phone chirps across the room. I have no doubt that it’s Mary, explaining something about a discussion that got really in depth and led to too much wine and now she has to sober up, or maybe even, if you don’t mind, it’s no trouble, she’ll just stay with her friend Hannah in the city?

  
I blink at the screen.

  
_John. I wondered if you might be free tomorrow. There’s a case. S_

  
I read it three more times and finish the beer in one swig.

  
_What time?_

  
_Your earliest convenience. I’ll be in all day and evening. Let yourself in._

 

 

 

SHERLOCK

It’s not quite that I hate to be touched.

  
It doesn’t bother me to consider the cup of a cool hand on my forehead (Mummy), nor a tousle of hair or occasional embrace scented with Nicotiana tabacum and Mentha piperita (Dad). My sleep is not disturbed by the memory of Mycroft’s brisk hands at my throat, looping and twisting an elaborate cravat (or, once, removing a shoelace from my arm, swabbing the track mark, holding my neck and saying inches from my face, “If you die, I will crawl into Hell with you and ensure that you never have peace.”).

  
I am reliably able to tolerate and even initiate contact with Mrs. Hudson, Molly, Lestrade, and, always, John.

  
But the viscid memory of shark skin twines around an endless mental rehearsal of my impending evening with Cosgrove Gentry—a sallow, portly man, more bulldog than hammerhead—and I’m startled into nausea by the casual fingers of cashiers and cabbies as they hand me change, or police officers who brush past me in their haste.  
When I said that sex doesn’t alarm me, I meant it. How could I possibly have made it to the age of thirty eight, in my profession, without knowing every bawdy specific of what dull people get up to with their bodily fluids? The chemistry really is incredibly simple.

  
But one of the few requirements for participation is that one not twitch out of one’s skin at the slightest physical contact.

  
It’s only a minor seduction. Amateur work. The target does not need to be persuaded; merely enticed. I’ve mustered salacious smiles and all manner of trivial coquetry in order to gain access to restricted areas and documents. It’s nothing. A trail of fingers along a willing arm. Laughter, fake and sparkling; false declarations of the target’s ingenuity and prowess. A. . .

  
. . .and here I’m sometimes forced to relinquish the meagre contents of my stomach. . . .

  
. . .sloppy, eager, open-mouthed kiss.

  
In my desperation, I called Billy. I don’t know what I thought he could do. His dirty clothes and violet-smudged eyes threatened to give me hives even without the prospect of touching him, and resorting to drugs would threaten the crucial clarity I need to extract these files without detection. Anyway, John would kill me if I enlisted chemical assistance. Correction: John would be very, very hurt. And that’s something I’ve seen enough of for a life time.

  
I considered asking Molly, but not even I am that cruel. And it’s not a woman that I need. Sometimes I wish it were.

  
Graham would never agree to it and I would never ask.

  
There is one variable that has already given me unprecedented results. An immeasurably competetent, stalwart, hay-scented, highly married variable. As I approach the last month of my preparations for Gentry with no progress made whatsoever, a growing, vaguely sick feeling brings me back to him again and again. John. The only person whose touch I’ve not only not minded, but craved. The only non-blood related person save Mrs. Hudson whom I’ve ever removed my gloves to touch. John Watson, the warm. The calloused and gentle. The firm. The golden.

 

JOHN

 

He looks good.

  
It shouldn’t be the first thing I notice, but I’ve been worried. Ever since I realized that he’d left my wedding, waltz and all, I’ve been preoccupied with wondering what he’s doing when I’m not around. If I’m more honest than I care to be while sober, I’ve always done that. Never stopped wondering. Not even when he was dead.

  
Who is he with? Is he eating, and if so, what? Is he watching Bond movies when no one is looking, or surfing celebrity gossip sites? What experiments are festering under his microscope? Is he taking every appropriate precaution on cases I can’t attend (or that he hasn’t invited me on)? Is he sleeping? Drinking? Using? Masturbating?

  
When he shot that rancid man in the head I thought, for a third time: this is it. The firework finally burns out and fades into the sky.

  
But here he is at 17:00 in the center of London, smouldering like an ember that could ignite anything it touches. He’s as broad as ever. Clearly been eating well enough, even without me to order him into it. His arms are folded and his back is to me, in silhouette from the early evening light: one long illuminated curve from neck to arse. Perfectly normal to notice the hollow space between his hips where the sheen of his shirt dips softly. Just standard best mate observation.

  
When he turns to look at me, his smile is slow and reticent. Almost. . .shy?

  
“John.”

  
My name looks soft in his mouth.

  
“Sherlock.”

  
“Thank you for coming.”

  
I step toward my old chair without thinking about it and allow my fingers to caress the worn tapestry. He grins. The lines around his eyes are gentle. “Go ahead,” he says, which is strange. I’ve never felt the need for permission before.

  
I close my eyes as I lower myself into the full envelopment of Baker Street: its clean smell of ethanol, dried flowers, dust, and Sherlock. The sound of rush hour traffic. When I open them, he’s seated across from me, leg tapping, fingers folded in front of his lips.

  
“So.”

  
Tap tap tap tap tap.

  
“How’s Layla?”

  
“Sherlock.”

  
“I. . .miss her.”

  
I laugh. “Bet you’re glad I didn’t bring her, though.”

  
He nods and clears his throat. “Well. This particular topic isn’t really suited for children.”

  
“She’s six months old.”

  
“Ah. Still.”

  
I rub my hands together and meet his eyes for what feels like the first time in months. “So, what is it, then? Murder? Embezzlement? Must be urgent, with such short notice.”

  
“Sorry about that.”

  
“Don’t be.” I stare at him until he looks back at me. “I never mind.”

  
“Thank you.”

  
A moment passes in a silence that could almost be described as uncomfortable, were I not so absorbed with the simple joy of sitting here, with him.

  
“John, this is a bit. . .delicate.”

  
I can feel my eyebrows rise toward my hairline. “Oh? Do you need. . .um. . .medical advice?”

  
“Of a sort. I suppose that’s one way of thinking about it.”

  
Curiosity prickles at the base of my neck. Sherlock has never come to me for that sort of counsel. I’ve seen him through various minor ailments, of course, but usually under duress. I would have liked to assist more with the gunshot wound, given that it was my (lying, criminal) wife who put it there, but any attempts of doing more than checking it for infection and healing were waved off. “It’s fine, John. I have an army of specialists to harass me about it.” It stung, really, not being allowed access to him, even if just for the chance to feel the evidence of his living skin.

  
So the idea of helping him now, with anything at all—anything I might know more about than he does—sends an itch of anticipation up my spine.  
“There’s a case.”

  
“Yes. I gathered that much.”

  
“A case. . .involving. . .” He exhales slowly.

  
“Take your time.”

  
He looks up at me from where he’s been hiding, under his lashes. “John. You’re always so. . .kind. I want you to know that that is the only reason I dare make this request of you. I do so at the risk of our friendship, which I value over any human relationship I’ve ever had, because I believe that that kindness will allow you to forgive me, even if you cannot help me.”

  
“Jesus, Sherlock.” I am aware that I sound a bit breathless. “What is it?”

  
He inhales deeply. “Mycroft has asked me to infiltrate the private residence of a heroin mogul. Cosgrove Gentry.”

  
“Oh, no. You are not shooting up again, no matter fucking what. I could kill your brother, I swear to God. . .”

  
He laughs through his nose. “As much as I appreciate the thought, it isn’t that.”

  
“Hmm. You want to fake it, then? I’ve heard of undercover agents doing that. Former addicts, even. They inject saline solutions in the right place, so it looks real. I suppose I could help you with that, if you swear the needle won’t. . .tempt you.”

  
He rolls his eyes and sighs. “For God’s sake. No. No drugs. Nothing like that.”

  
My eyebrows are starting to ache from being drawn together for so long. “Then what?”

  
“Cosgrove Gentry is a homosexual. Apparently he has some sort of fixation on me. Prostitutes with curly hair.”

  
“What?”

  
His hands circle each other: moving on. “Mycroft believes that if I, er. . .distract him, as it were, I will be in an advantageous position to procure certain sensitive materials.”

  
“Oh.” The prickling at my nape creeps up my scalp, and a slow nausea blooms in my gut. “God. Are you really okay with that? Can’t it be someone else?”

  
He shrugs. “It’s a form of atonement. A required favor. I have to do it, if I want to avoid prison. I think you’ll agree that the level of boredom I’d be sure to reach in there would be nothing less than catastrophic.”

  
“Fuck. I don’t know what to say.” Maybe something about the world-sized guilt in my stomach over the fact that my best friend has killed someone for my sake, and is being forced to sleep with a cretinous lowlife rather than face life in prison.The words die in my throat.

  
“Say that you’ll consider helping me.”

  
“Okay. Yeah. Of course.” Anything. “But. . .how, exactly?”

He shuts his eyes tightly. “As I think you know, I don’t have much experience in that particular area.”

  
“Of. . .distracting people?”

  
The strong line of his shoulder sags. “Sex. Intimacy. Any of it.”

  
Jesus fucking Christ. “Have you ever?”

  
He opens his eyes to mine, as if searching for signs of judgement. I wonder what he sees. “No.”

  
I lean toward him in my chair and, after some consideration, cover his hand with mine. “Tell me what you need.”

 

 

 

SHERLOCK

Good John. Kind John. Desperately, almost morbidly curious John, straining at this chance to know about my most profound weakness. It’s obvious in his careful attention, which he is trying so hard to keep at a professional, doctorly level. His hand over mine is as dry and soothing as I need it to be.

  
This is as good a start as any. Why shouldn’t he get something in return? Fodder for the blog: Sherlock Holmes’ blood might run red after all.

  
“Recently, I’ve developed something of an aversion to being touched. Particularly by men in their late forties and fifties.”

  
John flinches, and he immediately retracts his hand. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. God. I should have guessed.”

  
“No, see, that’s. . .that’s the crux of it, John. You’re a bit different.”

  
“Oh. Oh?”

  
“I’ve never minded when you touch me. And I don’t think I’ll mind now. Hence the desire to experiment.”

  
I pause, then place his hand back on mine. His respiration becomes audible. Disgusted, perhaps. I’ve taken his friendly interest too far.

  
“I need to become accustomed to. . .put bluntly, to men’s hands on me. To their closeness in an intimate setting. It is imperative that Cosgrove Gentry not suspect anything to be off when I undertake this operation.”

  
John clears his throat and purses his lips. “What do you need me to do?”

  
I turn his hand over in mine. This one of our longest uninterrupted stretches of touching, ever. The effect is. . .interesting. The heat from where our veins and arteries rest against each other, barely sheathed by the thick of our palms, creeps up my arm and neck, into my scalp, so that I am sure I am marked, scarlet and obvious.

  
“I thought that perhaps we could start with a hug.”

  
His mouth twitches into a grin. “Hmm. I guess we’ve never really done that, have we? Just for a second at the wedding. And the dance lessons, but those don’t really count.”

  
As if I weren’t aware of the exact location, quality, and duration. The scorch of his fingers as they drifted between my shoulder blades.

  
“I thought we could start the way we are, fully clothed, and then, perhaps. . .move from there.”

  
He straightens into military posture. “All right.”

  
“Are you sure?”

  
“Yes. Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  
“Maybe you want to check with Mary.”

  
He squints, eyebrows drawn together. “No. I don’t think that’s necessary. Do you? This is. . .personal. And it’s not like we’ll actually be sleeping together or anything.”  
I expel a damp laugh. “Of course not.”

  
“Right. So.” As he stands, his hands swing at his sides. The left one spasms slightly.

  
“I want to do this for you.” His tone is serious and soft. There is a respect to it that makes me shiver.

  
I stand, too, and circle the chair until I am in front of him, my legs hipswidth apart. From this distance, I could kiss the top of his head. “I. . .thank you.”

  
After I’ve stood frozen for thirty full seconds, blinking rapidly, he nods, nudges into my space, and slips both arms under mine. The sudden contact shocks me like the eels I once pilfered from the London Aquarium. I remain rigid. Just as I’m certain that this won’t work—I won’t be able to unlock my treacherous joints, even in the arms of the person I trust the most, and I’ll be forced to finish out my miserable life in a state of mortal, prison-bound boredom—John does something extraordinary. His hands slide to the region of my sacrum and he rubs small circles there, easing me forward so that our chests are flush. With that touch, I suddenly know that I can defer to him in this as I have in so many other matters. I can allow him to be my feet on the ground while my head is soaring above London. He is here now as he has been since I met him: as my cover, my doctor, my advisor. My friend.

  
As I ease forward into his arms, he hums and says, “That’s it. Take your time.”

  
Sensation swamps me and blacks out thought beyond warm, so warm and solid. The scent of his bike ride from that hideous neighborhood eclipses the room: _Agrostis atlantica_ and petrol and some stranger’s cigarette—Pall Mall—overlaid by simple, practical laundry detergent. Near his left ear, I catch the faintest scent of Layla, but nothing that I can pinpoint as Mary.

  
Seconds liquidate into the hollows of our expanding chests. How do people do this so often, so casually? Why have we never done this before?

  
How can something that feels so safe raise every hair on my body?

  
After an unfathomable amount of time, he murmurs: “Sherlock? Are you all right? Is this okay?”

  
The words are hot against my ribs.

 

 

 

JOHN

This is a bad idea. How could this possibly be anything but a very bad idea?

  
It feels rather right, for a terrible, no good, awful plan that is sure to end in disaster. His arms around me heat me up just where I’ve always felt the coldest.

  
And how could I refuse? It’s bad enough that my suspicions about the extent of his sexual experience have been confirmed, with the addendum that he intends to finally explore that part of himself, not as a natural progression of romantic love, but for the sake of the Work. Even a mandatory bit of Work. He needs someone he can trust without question, and I have always wanted—needed—to be that for him.

  
He smells like every good thing in London: fog and tea and tobacco; patchouli and rosin.

  
The desire to place my lips beneath his jaw is overwhelming.

  
I pull him in a bit closer and ask if he’s all right. His heartbeat is elevated—possible sign of anxiety—but his breathing is normal.

  
“Yes.”

  
“Do you want to keep doing this for awhile?”

  
He squeezes me, and it feels like he’s testing my limits. As if there were anything I wouldn’t let him do to me. That, if pressed, I wouldn’t beg him for.

  
“Yes.”

  
I close my eyes and try not to consider the nights I left half moon impressions in my palms and teeth marks beneath my lower lip, imagining something like this. Even before he fell. But especially after. How I’ve longed to hold him down. He sometimes seems more like a concept than a human—a sexless blur of hands and soil analysis and mortuary chemicals, spitting output like a calculator. But I know him. And to my constant joy and terror, he is not the moon, but a man.

  
“Perhaps. . .perhaps we could take off our shirts.”

  
Oh, God.

  
I nod against his neck and reluctantly pull away. The room is suddenly cold, though it is July.

  
His fingers move to the top button of his white summer shirt.

  
“Let me,” I say. I don’t think I meant to.

  
“Why?”

  
“He’ll want to do this to you.” Yes, blame it on him, John. In for a penny. May as well lower yourself all the way to the level of the enemy. “Maybe you ought to get used to the feeling of someone undressing you.”

  
He blinks several times.

  
“Only if you’re okay with it. There’s no time limit here, Sherlock. We can go as slowly as you want. Do whatever you want.”

  
He shakes his head. “Thank you. But you’re right. Go ahead. Please.”

  
My fingers are clumsy and rough against the sheen of the fabric. With no small amount of shame, I note the tremor in my left hand as it slips each button through its hole.  
When I reach the last, I meet his eyes and take in his subtle nod before slipping it over his shoulders.

  
He is so beautiful in the waning summer light that I feel like I’ve been punched.

  
“John? Okay?”

  
I clear my throat. “Yeah. Of course.”

  
The gunshot scar is still an angry pink. He looks so uncertain that it’s all I can do to hold back from embracing him again. But if there is one thing that I must maintain respect for while we do this, it is permission. His permission.

  
He gazes at my collar. “Can I?”

  
“What?”

  
He reaches out with both hands and holds either side of it between his fingers. His voice is very low. “In case he wants me to undress him.”

  
I swallow loudly. He doesn’t look away as he flicks open each button and leaves me in my vest.

  
“This too,” he says, and peels it over my shoulders.

  
It’s not as if we haven't seen each other at this stage of undress before. In fact, I’ve seen him totally disrobed, and not just at Buckingham Palace—the natural consequence of sharing a flat and a bathroom. I don’t recall ever clenching my fists this hard or having to look away as if from the naked sun.

  
“John,” he says, his hands hot on my shoulders. “Are you all right? You don’t have to do this. We can stop now if you want.”

  
I shake my head, eyes still closed. “No. No, no, I’m fine. Come here.”

  
He hesitates, then steps into my outstretched arms. And. Oh.

  
My stomach swoops like it hasn’t done since I almost fell off a cliff near Kandahar. He is solid and scorching and present and real against my stomach, chest, shoulders. Under my palms.

  
And quiet. Something clenches in my gut when I feel the point of his chin hit the outer crest of my shoulder. Nothing about him could be described as fragile, yet I’m reminded of the fierce protectiveness I feel toward my infant daughter.

  
“Okay?”

  
He makes a soft noise that sounds vaguely affirmative.

  
So I tighten my arms around him and allow myself to savor him like this: warm and loose-limbed, breathing steadily against my chest.  
Until my phone chirps.

  
I pull back from him quickly, as if caught in the act (of what, exactly, I don’t know, but it sure doesn’t feel like fidelity). The loss of contact is jarring, and he looks lost and bereft as a child woken up in a strange place.

  
“Christ, it’s Mary. I’m meant to have had all night free, but she’s needed at her volunteer center. I have to go.”

  
He nods, very slowly and deliberately, eyes unfocused. Then he begins to tremble.

  
“Sherlock? What’s wrong?” It’s a gentle vibration at first, but it quickly escalates into a full body shiver. When I cup his neck with my hands and pull away to look into his dilated pupils, I can see that his teeth are chattering.

  
“Jesus.” I wrap an arm around his waist and lead him to the sofa. “Wait here. Do not move.”

  
When I return with a blanket and a paper bag, he won’t make eye contact. The chattering has stopped, but his breaths are still short and his palms buzz when I hold them against mine.

  
I wrap the blanket around him and hold the bag to his mouth. “It’s an old, worn out trick, but it works. Breathe.”

  
He takes it with unsteady hands, and I watch with bated breath as it inflates and deflates at roughly the same rate as my lungs. His eyes are bloodshot as he stares at the floor.

  
It’s terrifying: his edges gone blurred and red, just like at Baskerville. He isn’t supposed to lose composure. He isn’t meant to be afraid. Any emotion strung between us has always been at least somewhat theoretical—buffered by the clinical shield of his supposed sociopathy.

  
He doesn’t feel things that way.

  
I rub his back over the blanket. “Sssh. It’s okay. This is what I’m here for.”

  
He shakes his head with heavy, precise motions. “No,” he croaks. “It isn’t. You can go now.”

  
“And leave you like this? You’re dreaming.”

  
He closes his eyes. “I wish.”

  
With great care, I walk my fingers up the blanket and palm the back of his sweaty neck. He leans into the touch, and I stroke the curls there. “I’ll get you some water,” I say when his breathing has calmed to a more natural rate.

  
When he takes the glass, his mouth bows into a shaky half smile. Before he can say anything, I see something beyond the threshold of the blanket. Something I’ve been an absolute dolt for not seeing before.

  
“Sherlock. . .what are these?” I pull the blanket from his shoulders with as much delicacy as I can manage in my sudden panic. His back is crosshatched with violet scars. They look to be raised welts from a whip. “Who did this to you?”

  
He pulls the blanket back from me and replaces it tightly across his back. “Go home, John.”

  
“I want an answer.”

  
“This was a mistake.” He blinks slowly. “I’ll. . .I’ll be in touch. Just go. I’ve had quite enough for today.”

  
I shake my head and flex my fists. But he looks destroyed, and I don’t live here anymore. I nod as I retrieve my bike and carry it down to the street.

 

That night I can think of nothing but that body, scarred and gorgeous, under the hands and whips of other men.

  
I wake to a text: _I am sorry. If you’ll forgive me, I want to try again. S_

 

 

 

SHERLOCK

The first night I dreamed of dogs was at Baskerville, after the case had closed (not before, why not before—why only after the cause of our terror was revealed, its massive jaws and phosphorescent eyes reduced to canine carnage on the forest floor?).

  
It was the mammoth and coal black hallucination of Dewar’s Hollow. It spoke to me in Moriarty’s voice.

  
It told me what I already suspected, what was beginning to assemble: that I would have to leave John in the next year.

  
It said that he wouldn’t know why and he wouldn’t understand.

  
It snarled. Its enormous teeth closed around my wrists and my sternocleidomastoid, enough to leave imprints but not to draw blood. I did not struggle.

  
It said, good thing he doesn’t love more than an idea: a spitfire concept in a coat.

  
I woke drenched in cold sweat and spent the hours until dawn mapping the slack muscles of John’s face, so as to catalogue their every possible configuration.

 

 

 

JOHN

Of course we can. We can try as many times as he needs. We can try for the rest of our lives, if that’s what it takes. We can try all the way through this looming doomsday rendezvous. We can forget it all together, and I can single-handedly slaughter any force, human or national or chemical, that would remove him from my arms. We can try till kingdom fucking come.

 

SHERLOCK

The scrape of his bike against the wall of the stairwell warms me like a ’79 Armagnac Castarède. In that sound, his journey to me resonates. It wasn’t easy to get out of the house. He and Mary argued over feeding times and whose “night” it is. But he’s here. I asked him to come back and he did.

  
Three years ago, I would have considered that par for the course. I excite John; I define John. John would insist on inhabiting a grey little world constructed by the status quo if I weren’t there to grab him by the hand and usher him into the rebellion he deserves: ergo, I’m entitled to all of John’s space and time. What wretched naiveté.

  
“Hullo,” he says as he steps through the door.

  
“Hey.”

  
He smells fantastic even as he stows his bike, like fresh sweat and the city. I rarely experience a salivary reflex in response to food or any other supposed stimuli, but my mouth fills with water with a speed that alarms me.

  
All too quickly, he stands before me, eyes expectant and unbearably gentle.

  
“I. . .” The wetness suddenly evaporates around my tongue, and I cough. “Should I. . .offer you. . .something to drink? Is that what I should do?”

  
He grins. “You don’t have to worry about things like that. It’s just me.”

  
“I. . .know that. I’m not. I just. . .don’t have anything. I used to, sometimes. When you lived here.”

  
He shakes his head, still smiling. “Well, as it happens, I took care of it for you.” He unshoulders his knapsack and retrieves a six-pack of the light German beer he favors. “Thought we could both do with a tipple before we give this another shot.”

  
I wonder if my smile betrays my relief. We move to the chairs, and he hands me a beer that is surprisingly cold.

  
“Cheers,” he says, and hits my can with his in a gesture that can only be described as playful. I nod and smile. The bright taste of wheat and hops is surprisingly refreshing, welcome in the summer heat.

  
“Woah, slow down, Sherlock,” he laughs, and I realize that I’ve drained the can in a few swallows. “Wouldn’t want a repeat of the stag do!”

  
“Which part?” I feel a bit braver than I did, and suppress internal commentary about the cliché of liquid courage. I make a grabbing motion with my hand, and he shakes his head as he hands me another.

  
“I was thinking the part where we fell asleep on the stairs and had to be woken up by Mrs. Hudson to finish out the night. Or the part where you threw up in someone’s posh apartment. Or the part where we passed out in a jail cell and woke up to Greg, shouting.”

  
“Who?”

  
“Lestrade. You know his name.”

  
I roll my eyes and take a sip of the new beer. “You wouldn’t want a repeat of your hand on my knee, either, I imagine.”

  
“I slipped! I had to get my balance and you were the closest thing to grab on to.”

  
“I see.”

  
“Oh my God. What do you think I was doing, then? Casually groping your knee, of all things?”

  
“Thought had occurred.”

  
“Christ. Are you already drunk?”

  
“Evasion.”

  
He stands up suddenly and crushes the can of his second lager with his left hand. “Are we doing this, or not?”

  
I finish mine in one long swig and stand, too. “If you’re amenable.”

  
“I am. And I have a few ideas. The lager was the first one, though that hasn’t gone over quite as well as I’d hoped.”

  
I shrug. “I do feel a bit more relaxed.”

  
“Good. Now take off your shirt and turn around.”

  
“Erm. . .”

  
“Sorry. It’s just. . .I have a plan. I’ve been doing some reading. Will you just. . .let me try something?”

  
I begin to unbutton my shirt, since he hasn’t offered to do it for me. “Whatever you think best, Doctor.”

  
He looks up at me with the stern expression he uses when he most needs me to listen. The command in his eyes causes my hands to stutter in their work. “I want to help, Sherlock. But you have to help yourself, too. If at any point you start to feel the least bit uncomfortable—even it’s just a twinge—you have to tell me. And then we can talk about it and try to figure out what to work on. Agreed?”

  
I’ve run out of buttons. Though the act feels unbearably intimate, I don’t break his gaze as I shoulder out of the shirt and toss it onto the chair behind me. He swallows visibly.

  
“Where should I stand?”

  
He clears his throat. “Over by the window. So I can see what I’m doing.”

  
I follow orders and wish that he were a bit less dressed, too, like last time.

  
“That’s good. Now. Breathe in and count for four seconds, then exhale for six. Can you do that?”

  
I fight the urge to spew a bitter retort—“Yes, John, I can”—and instead focus on the warm wall of his voice behind me, kind and familiar, barring the judgement of unseen observers.

  
“Good. Keep doing that.” He hums as he does when something irks him, allowing me to hear his quiet despair at the state of my ruined back. “I’m going to touch you now, okay?”

  
I nod slowly and roll my neck side to side. The sudden heat of a palm over the topmost notch of my spine causes me to inhale sharply, and I am glad that John wanted me faced away from him, so that he can’t see the hard squint of my closed eyes.

  
“Easy,” he says, as if to a horse or a dog. The thought is strangely calming. “Can I keep going?”

  
“Yes.”

  
The hot flat of his other hand finds my left shoulder, and he begins to slowly knead the flesh beneath his hands.

  
“Oh,” I say, because it’s wonderful. My fingers, which I hadn’t noticed clenching into fists, loosen and dangle by my thighs.

  
“Okay?” He moves down my back, along my spine, expertly aware of each minute muscle there.

  
“Y-yes.”

  
“Just try to relax. You’re already doing it. Doing so well. How long have you carried this much tension up here?”

  
“I don’t know.”

  
“Too long, I’d wager.” His finger tips ghost along ridges of scar tissue from the skin over my kidney to just above my coccyx, before seeming to remember themselves and move to safer terrain between my bicep and clavicle. The soft scent of beer mingles with our sweat, yeasty and reassuring.

  
His hands grow bolder as I gradually acquiesce into them. He begins to press harder, and soon reaches knots of deep tissue that make me groan in spite of myself.  
“Sorry,” I mutter, mortified.

  
He chuckles, and I think I detect a hint of satisfaction in his voice. “Quite all right. I’m not surprised, the way that muscle was knotted up.” His hands still, flat against my scapulae. “You must have been in so much pain, from whatever gave you these scars. To say nothing of the gunshot wound.”

  
I shrug, and I can feel my stretched shoulders hunching toward each other.

  
“No no, no. Stay with me. I’m sorry I said that.” He digs back in and kneads me back into submission, so effectively that my neck hangs loose, my chin pointed toward the floor.

  
“I have another idea,” he says, after he has worked over what feels like every part of my back and upper arms at least twice. I feel light and limp to an extent that I can’t remember ever having experienced while sober.

  
“Hmm?”

  
“You don’t have to move. Just trust me, yeah?”

  
“Mmhm.”

  
Like the slack rope he’s rendered me, he draws me in, so that his front is snug against my back. His hands hover over my hips before carefully settling there.  
“Lean back against my shoulder.”

  
“What?”

  
He gently spans my throat with his right hand and guides my head back until my neck is cradled by the curve of his clavicle, my eyes directed at the ceiling. His breaths are steady beneath me. For a moment, I am distracted by the spectacle that we must make: him six inches shorter, fully clothed, arms wrapped around me like a lover. But as he brings both hands back to rest over my hips, more firmly now, I surrender to the haven of his sheer proximity. In a half-daze, I think I hallucinate the scrape of his stubble against my cheek, rubbed in an affectionate pattern, and the skim of thin lips pressed behind my ear.

  
“Sherlock,” he whispers, tracing absent circles along my lower abdomen. His voice is dizzyingly close. “I. . . nevermind. Do you think this is helping at all?”

  
I nod as much as I can against his neck. In truth, I can see no practical application of this position—I’m hardly going to hold Cosgrove Gentry until he gives up the needed documents. But far be it for me to forfeit this: the honey damp and hay-sweet scent of his skin.

  
I brave a glance at his face. His eyes are closed.

  
“Good.”

  
“John,” I say, attempting to look at him without tickling him with my breath. “I feel that I owe you an explanation.”

  
“Hmm? For what?”

  
“For yesterday. You weren’t the cause of my panic attack.”

  
“No? That’s. . .good. What was?”

  
“It’s hard to explain. Your touch seems to have a rather profound quieting effect on me. When it was removed so suddenly, everything, for lack of a better word. . .rushed back in.”

  
He leans his head against mine. “It isn’t pathetic. Nothing about you is pathetic. You’re the furthest thing.”

  
“Hm.”

  
His arms around me—the heated hum of various arterial pathways, the webby filigree of nerves lighting up each capable joint—imbue me with untold solace and strength. Nothing bad can happen within this circle. No hounds threaten my fingers and ankles.

  
“There’s something else,” I almost whisper.

  
“Don’t tell me this motherfucker is also a serial killer.”

  
I can’t help but laugh, and am treated to the strange sweetness of his hands rising with my diapraghm. “That would make for a far more enticing case.”  
“What is it, then?”

  
“I. . .it should come as no surprise to you that I’ve never. . . kissed anyone. I fear I may have to in the course of this mission.”

  
He snaps to attention, face as close to mine as if we were lying side by side in bed. His gaze drifts toward my lips.  
“I don’t want Cosgrove Gentry to be my first.”

  
“Sherlock…”

  
A chirping sound shatters the hush of the room. He tightens his arms around me, even as I nearly knock my head against his in surprise.

  
“That’ll be Mary,” he says. He doesn’t move, though I can feel the tension along his biceps and in his wrists.

  
“You can let go, John. It won’t be like yesterday.”

  
He relinquishes his grip slowly, with apparent reluctance, though that can’t be right. It is Mary on the phone, after all.

  
“Oh, good. She’s furious.” He sighs. “I guess it has got kind of late.”

  
“Go. They need you.”

  
He looks as if he’s about to say something, then grimaces at his phone and picks up his knapsack. “Keep the last few lagers. Though I know it’s not normally your thing.”  
“I’ll save them for the next time you come over.”

  
“Right.” As he rounds the corner with his bike, he hesitates in the doorway. “See you soon?”

  
I manage a small grin. “Soon.”

  
“Good night.”

  
As I watch him through the window, I can’t help but hold my arms around myself, chasing his heat.

 

 

There were nights on the hunt when I was sure I wouldn’t live another day and all I thought about in what could have been my dying moments were his hands: small and beautifully formed, capable of stopping blood in arteries; of switching around organs and veins and simply making the near dead well again. I lay awake on Aderall or whatever close thing was available in the local pharmacy and considered their various spasms and flexes. His greatest tells.

  
I thought if I could have known for one night—one moment—what it was like to be his, to have him call me his, I could die satisfied. Not that I deserve it.  
I could have died human.

  
But even knowing that I never would, it was worth it to think that he’d be safe, kissing and wedding and penetrating miscellaneous women. Anything to keep the steady beat of his pulse in his spasming fingers.

 

 

JOHN

This is no longer even sort of theoretical.

 


	2. Chapter 2

SHERLOCK

What could he possibly be doing at 9 p.m. on a Wednesday night in that grave of a street, bereft of sirens and traffic and me?

The baby will be asleep.

Mary is almost certainly not at home. She’ll have claimed to be volunteering for a night shift at a suicide prevention hotline, when really she’s up late with her old boyfriend, David. If not for the chill of horror that haunts my spine at the mere notion of someone cheating on John, once they had him, I almost wouldn’t blame her. David is simple: an easy fuck and easier company, all kind levity compared to John’s recent weary slouch. He’s a bitter cup of tea, our John, all angry tannins left to steep. He thinks that he’s done her a favor with this feeble attempt to keep the illusion together: Dr. and Mrs. and baby Watson, available for playdates and barbecues. He thinks he’s played the ultimate trump card in taking her back. What he hopes to gain in return, I have yet to conclude.

Which is why I haven’t told him yet, sworn as I am to protect their interests.

Because I don’t know what to do about her infidelity. Loathe as I am to admit it. Marriage. Not my area.

Especially not his marriage.

So what is he doing, then, so far from where he could be lined up against my back, saying Easy, You’re so tense here, You’re doing so well?

I’ve spent the 1.5 years I’ve been back resisting the urge to ask, but the sense memory of his heat and scent makes me itchy for information. Maybe now. Maybe now it wouldn’t be quite so intrusive. If I just asked.

_Eastenders or Tom Clancy? S_

_Fuck off._

_All right._

_No, don’t really. Eastenders, as it happens. But I’m not much paying attention._

_No? Distracted?_

_A bit._

_I realize that I’m preternaturally observant, John, but I can’t quite read minds._

_You never text me._

_Patently untrue._

_Not just casually. Not since. You know._

_You’re drinking tea. On a Wednesday, John? You’ll never get to sleep._

_Fuck. OFF._

_Fine._

_Why are you texting, though? Is something on your mind?_

_Sherlock?_

_You’re worried about this thing with the heroin guy, aren’t you?_

_I wouldn’t say worried._

_Listen. Maybe. . .it sounds daft, but maybe I could talk to Mycroft. Or someone. There has to be another way._

_As touched as I am by your gross overestimation of my brother’s opinion of you, this isn’t his decision. It has to be this, prison, or Serbia._

_Maybe I could do it for you._

_You’d. . . .John, Cosgrove Gentry is a man. Even if it were possible, which it isn’t since his fixation is on me, you’re married and not gay._

_Neither are you._

_I think._

_Are you?_

_You’re even having Earl Grey, which contains slightly more caffeine than the average cup of PG Tips._

_Sherlock. It’s okay if you are. You could just tell me, once and for all. It won’t even be face to face._

_Don’t you think I deserve to know, now that I’m helping you?_

_If you’re uncomfortable with the project, then absolutely forget it. I’m sorry I ever imposed. It was a terrible idea._

_No! Please. I didn’t mean to pry._

_But you did. You are._

_I just thought after five years of knowing you. . .best mates do typically know this stuff about each other. But if it’s something you never want to discuss, forget it. That’s more than okay._

_I am._

_You are?_

_Gay._

_Satisfied?_

_And the kissing? You’ve really never?_

_Good night, John._

_Wait!_

 

JOHN

Mary informs me that she’ll be taking Layla on a weekend stay to her mate Hannah’s summer house in Brighton.

“I’d love for you to come, of course,” she says while packing the diaper bag. Layla grips her toes in her carseat, absorbed by their apparently boundless interest. “But, you know. You’re on call.”

“Do I get a say in this at all? Given that she’s my daughter, too?”

“Oh, come on, John. You’ve been aching for some time to yourself. It’s just forty eight hours—she gets to see the ocean and smell all the different sorts of trees, Hannah and I catch up on gossip and bad telly—and you can drink yourself silly or go on a case with Sherlock. Whatever you want.”

I place my finger in Layla’s hand and she squeezes, giggling.

“John. Whatever you want.” Her expression seems meaningful, but I can’t decipher it. “Okay?”

She shoulders the bag and lifts the carseat so that I can kiss the baby’s cheeks.

“Okay.”

“I’ll phone when we get there. Have a nice weekend.”

 

The air at Baker Street feels heady and electric. Even before I get through the door, I can sense that Sherlock’s in a manic state, casting currents of information around with his big hands, head whirling hot.

A case, then. Thank God. Maybe something else has come up. Maybe he won’t have to do this awful thing, after all.

“Ah, good, you’re here.”

“Well, yes. You did ask me to come.” His eyes are wide and his chest rises quickly through the creamy fabric of his shirt. I find myself calculating how long it will take to retrieve another paper bag from the kitchen, should a panic attack be imminent.

“Come and look.” He gestures broadly at the evidence wall, which has been strung and taped with pixelated photos of—yes, that is a man with a crew cut taking an enormous cock into his throat, and this, here, is a still of someone tied up with intricately knotted rope. There are a few digital closeups of various pale body parts: pink indentations on a pair of ashen wrists; the angry sucked marks of a mouth along a long white throat.

A case, all right. The worst case in fucking history.

“Time’s running out, John. The sum of my research is coming to a head. We need to pick up the pace on this project.”

“This is. . .research?”

He nods emphatically. The whites of his sclerae are too big around his darting pupils. “I’ve interviewed some of the prostitutes employed regularly by Gentry—they all, for the price of their regular fee, revealed that the target has a strong preference for oral sex and showy, decorative rope bondage. Obviously, I can’t allow for the constraint or risk of allowing him to bind me; therefore, I need to sufficiently distract and sate him before he expresses interest in doing so. Ideally, I’ll be able to bring him to powerful enough completion that he falls asleep, allowing me to locate the documents quickly and without interruption. Easier said than done without the aid of sedatives—Mycroft ixnayed that suggestion from the start, something about it being “too easy to trace” and “my own personal safety”—but in lieu of chemical interference, I believe that fellatio may be sufficient.”

He’s talking at an incredible speed, even for him; his last words are more panted than spoken. He grips hard at the back of his neck.

“Fellatio.”

“Yes. I realize that your marital situation and sexual orientation complicate matters, but Mary is a practical woman; perhaps if you explain the situation to her, within the bounds of classified information, of course, she would allow for a one-time interlude. . . .”

“Sherlock.”

“. . .you can just call her, then, and we can start right now. You can pretend that I’m a woman, can’t you? That I’m her? I’ve been doing reading; I’ve accrued quite a lot of theoretical knowledge, just need to apply it directly to a human subject, need to make sure it’s enough to render the recipient adequately insensate—“

“SHERLOCK.”

When he finally looks at me, his eyes are even less focused than I feared. The crease between them has appeared, causing him to look as strung out as when Irene Adler drugged him and he fell to his own bedroom floor, slurring.

I carefully pry his fingers from the nape of his neck and replace them with both of my cupped palms. He expels a long gust of an exhale. Some of the tension bleeds out of his face, and I catch a glimpse of his irises as they roll back into his head. He brings his hands to my wrists, as if to hold me in place.

“Listen to me. Look at me.”

He opens his eyes, breathing fast. He's dangerously close to over-oxygenation.

“You are not going to perform fellatio on me.”

“But, John—massage and— _hugging_ —“ he pronounces the word with a measure of scorn, though it was his idea that we start that, that we do any of this—“are all very good and quite—warm—really rather nice, relaxing—but I can’t just _embrace_ the target into submission.”

I shake my head so violently it strains my neck. “Sex isn’t some a la carte process. You can’t just pick an act and bloody, I don’t know. _Deploy_ it. You deserve. God, Sherlock, you deserve to be worshipped your first time. Every time. I’m sure as hell not going be a body part for you to experiment on before you—do _that_ —to some disgusting drug lord.”

His eyes narrow. “Then what do you suggest, Doctor?”

He spits the prefix, but doesn’t release his hold on my wrists. To someone looking in from the doorway, it might look like I was choking him.

“I could teach you how to immobilize him. Put him in a sleeper hold. He’d never know what hit him.”

He scoffs. “Come on, John. As much as I might want to, I can’t risk killing him. The whole point of this is to clear the last set of murder charges.”

I tug my hands back; he resists before seeming to realize that he’s been gripping them so tightly his knuckles gleam pale beneath translucent skin.

“Right. I know.” As if I could forget the silver and red imprint of his hands above his head and his cherrywood voice saying the wrong words: _Give my love to Mary._ “But there must be another way.”

“There isn’t.” His mouth quirks sadly. “It’s only a minor seduction.”

“I’m sorry. There’s not a lot that I won’t do for you, but this. . .I just can’t. Even besides the obvious factors—our friendship, the fact that you deserve so much better than to be an—an _orifice_ for this despicable mother _fucker_ —it is cheating. Mary and I are still working things out. I don’t think I can rightly ask her permission to have my best friend use me for blowjob practice.”

He winces, arms drawn around himself. My fingers ache to unspool the tension slung across his hunched shoulders.

“I don’t suppose it would change your mind if I told you she’s been doing the same to you for months.”

_“What?”_ My voice is low—dangerous and a bit frightening even to my own ears.

“Nothing. Forgive me. That was not good.”

“What do you mean, she’s been doing the same?”

He closes his eyes and rocks on his heels. “I didn’t mean to say.”

“But you did.”

“I. . .it was an accidental deduction. They started up while you were here, before Christmas. I thought she’d ended it when you took her back, but my eyes and ears around the city. . .there’s no book group, John. Nor any suicide prevention hotline.”

“Who? Oh, fuck, it doesn’t even matter. The fact that you knew and didn’t tell me. I don’t know what to say.”

“Please.” It’s nearly a whisper.

“No.”

The crack of the slammed door goes well with the smashed plate glass in my thoracic cavity.

 

SHERLOCK

Deletion is an imperfect process.

On a conscious level, it’s simple enough: find the offending file, pull it out by the roots, and shred it. So the Earth goes round the sun? Once purged, you’ll never need consider such trivialities (until humiliated in writing by your flatmate). It’s the work of a moment to burn a map of Bucharest after it’s no longer needed; to compact and do away with the imperfect tense in a lesser used language.

But the subconscious is an uncontrolled variable, and the accursed human tendency to regurgitate unneeded information in the form of sense memories and fevered dreams has the potential to undo attempt after attempt to remove something from one’s mind.

Which is why, after thirty three years, I wake up with the sensation of dog hair in my mouth, surrounded by the implacable scent of sun grass summer, nearly blinded by nostalgic light.

Which is why Mycroft can bring me to my knees with just one word.

Redbeard.

It took me, of all people, longer than any child who’s ever lived to understand that when things die, they don’t come back.

 

JOHN

Mary was right when she said I’ve wanted time alone. Now the blank and dark of her empty house--never ours--weigh down and suffocate. At the moment, I’d give anything to cradle Layla against my chest and laugh with her about the miracle of leaves.

How ugly:

That my anger at Mary isn’t the housefire anguish of a betrayed lover, but mere annoyance at her persistence in lying to me, after everything. That I should have guessed, but didn’t, because I’m still dull, average John, stumbling after clever shadows.

That the best and the wisest man I’ve ever known has been reduced to begging to rehearse sexual techniques on the most convenient male body around, because he’s terrified of servicing a fucking kingpin.

That in spite of my anger, a hot wire of temptation shot through me when he said it. That I’ve thought about it more nights than not: the lush O of his mouth stretched around my mediocrity.

 

I wake up gasping, but my dream wasn’t about the war. Panic and alarm tinge the dark room with red: something’s deeply wrong with Sherlock. My hands are shaking with it.  
No time to text. I have to hear him, whether the harsh scrape of his crazed breath or the cello of his sleepy voice.

“Sherlock?”

Warm static pours through the receiver like water until I realize it’s the rasp of coughing, staggered breath.

“J-john.”

“Oh my God.”

“Just—night—mares. Nothing—(a hard gasp I feel wrenched from my own tightening glottis)—to concern yourself with.”

“I’m on my way. Find the bag and breathe into it, or so help me.”

The phone is cold against my cheek in the rare cab that I manage to flag down this far out of town. I close my eyes against the sound of his ragged breath and the crinkle of paper.

 

He’s hunched on the couch, clutching shreds of paper bag with limp fingers. The windows are open, and the room is streaked with streetlight.

His vitals are stable and sound, though the size of his pupils give me pause.

His hands shake. He reaches for me.

“Ssh.” I move to hold him, but he stops me with two hands at the hem of my t-shirt.

“Off, off,” he mutters, “off, off.”

“Okay, yes, all right. Give us a minute.”

As I slip the shirt over my head, he moves to his own soft sleep shirt, but trembles too hard to maneuver the fabric.

“Let me. Let me.” I allow my palms to glide along his ribs as I remove the offending article; he sighs deeply, moving his hands to my wrists, as if afraid I’ll stop touching him.  
When all offending textiles have been removed, he dives for me. I catch him and allow him to invade every spare inch of space between our torsos and necks. His face is damp as he tucks it into the curve of my shoulder.

I smooth broad circles into his back. For several minutes we share the heat of the embrace, made humid by his still somewhat labored breaths, and listen to the deafening thud of my heartbeat.

“What’s going on?” I murmur the words into his curls, as quietly as I can. I don’t want to startle him.

He is quiet for so long that I assume he has chosen not to answer, which is fine. It’s all fine.

“There are dogs, John.” He speaks into my clavicle.

“Dogs.”

“Hounds.”

“Like at Baskerville?”

He nods very slowly. “A bit. There is that hound. The hallucination. You saw it. Coal black with red eyes.”

“. . .yes. You see it in your dreams?”

“Mm. It rakes its claws down my back, leaves deep gouges and they burn, not sharp but throbbing. A radiating pain.”

I trace his scars with the flats of my shaky palms; he swells into the touch.

“There’s a bulldog, too. Huge and hideous. It’s got great bleeding gashes across its face and back. Its teeth are exposed and they drip ropes of saliva— _disgusting_ —onto my hands before it bites me just hard enough to leave marks.

“And then there’s—oh, God.” He emits a solitary sob, alarming in its power and volume. I hold him as tightly as I can without compromising his respiration.

“What else is there, love?”

“I had a dog, myself, once.”

“Did you?”

“When I was very small.”

“What was his name?”

He laughs, but it’s bitter—self deprecating? “ _Redbeard_.”

“Oh, Sherlock.”

Tears well and slip past his closed eyes. His voice, when he continues, is cracked. “It’s a battle. They lunge at each other’s throats and snarl and growl—it’s deafening—and sometimes you win and sometimes they do. Sometimes I wake up sticky with blood and entrails.”

He smiles a bit, a heartbreaking contrast to the wet tracks on his cheeks. “But other times, when it’s over, I’m in the sun on the grass that’s dried, like in autumn, or a drought. Hay. And I’m warm. Especially here.” He reaches between our chests to touch the scar near his fifth rib.

I break down and kiss his forehead and hair. My chest constricts around speech, but I have to ask.

“What did you mean when you said, “sometimes you win?” Who wins?”

“It is Redbeard. But it’s you, too, John. It’s light and warmth. The sun. It’s. . .”

“Love.”

He makes a face. “Yes.”

“Come here.” I move my hands to his waist to guide him; he shifts into my lap so that two solid thighs frame mine and our pelvises meet. His heart beats right next to mine. Under different circumstances, I would never allow this position—not out of lack of desire, because God, if I didn’t have a good sense of what comprises human blood, I would swear that there’s something magnetic in ours that draws me to him; a low level hum of need that rises in frenzied frequency depending on how brilliant or beautiful he is in the moment, which is stupid, because he’s always beautiful and brilliant, even when he’s awful, and I always want him, am barely satisfied by the drowning sweetness of his skin draped over me, his now calm exhalations near my ear—but because I would betray myself. I couldn’t even blame my “transport;” all of me, mind and body and maybe even soul, would be channeled into that hopeful erection.

But my treacherous fluids are stilled by the things that have happened to him that I don’t know about. That I can’t see through the sights of a gun. By, God fucking curse them, the things that will happen that I can’t protect him from. His ankles cross behind my back and we are as close as two people can be without one being inside the other (and oh, how I wish we could cross that barrier, too; that we could blur these paltry lines of flesh and bone; that we could join up some DNA).  
My eyes are closed when he places his lips on mine.

 

SHERLOCK

For ten seconds, he holds my mouth with his.The tentative pressure of his lips (sohotsofirmsosoftsolikeIalwaysassumedandalsonotatall) is at once just another point of warm contact, soothing and natural, and a catalyst for a phosphorescence that sparks so brightly through my circulatory system that I’m sure I must be lighting up the room.  
He holds my chin in one beautiful hand and pulls away. His thumb lingers beneath my lower lip. I imagine that I know exactly what it looks like: the oily print he’s pressing there. That I could tell you without running any technical analysis where he’s been and what he’s been doing, based on that singular swirl of flesh. The lines between his eyes and around his mouth—that mouth where I could take up residence, could file myself down and live among his teeth and hard and soft palettes—crease into harsh shapes.

“Let’s just. . .come on, sweetheart. Sleep would be the best thing, right now.”

Ah. I got it wrong.

 

JOHN

God, but it’s not fair. He shouldn’t get to conduct me with this much ease. If I know him, and who ever knows if I even do, the lush swelter of his mouth on mine—where it slots so well, where it’s safe with me—where it’s supposed to be— could be a ploy to get what he wanted from me in the first place: practice. A safe rehearsal space. It certainly can’t be the the heartfelt, tentative, imploring thing that it seems to be. I never expected to hold a red-rimmed, shaking Sherlock Holmes back from the force of his own nightmares, but there are limits to what I can expect from a self-proclaimed sociopath. Aren’t there?

More importantly, his palms still tremble where they curl around my biceps. He’s in no state to do anything but sleep, and I am here to defend him from his dreams, as he unwittingly did for me during the years we lived together—(when I’d frequently be wrenched into the darkness of my room from a horrorshow of artillery and dust, only to be held by his violin or his shuffled steps or his muttered oaths, all audible through the thin ceiling).

At least, if nothing else, he was first kissed by someone who loves him. Who, God help me, loved him first.

“Hold on,” I say as I lift him off the ground without untangling his limbs from my grasp. He gasps and tightens his grip on my arms and around my back. He’s gorgeously heavy; flushed, warm, and so unquestionably alive.

“John, this is ridiculous,” he says, but doesn’t struggle when I carry him over the threshold to his room and deposit him on the crumpled duvet.

“Right. Just lie still, now. Will you do that for me?”

He looks up at me, features soft and worried. “Are you going to leave?”

I unbutton my trousers in answer, hoping that his deductive skills won’t fail him right now; that I’m not sending mixed messages. “Of course not.”

He eyes me with apparent suspicion. No such luck, then. “What are you doing?”

I leave my boxers in place and carefully, as if approaching a cat, crawl onto the bed beside him. He tenses when I place my hand on his hip, but relaxes when I turn him so that his front is pressing into the mattress. “Getting closer.”

His back is not nearly as knotted up beneath my hands as it was before, but there are plenty of kinks to work out as I do my best to unfold him. He sighs under my touch, and it could be with pleasure or relief or sadness. I fear seeing his face as much as I want nothing more in the world.

Just when I am sure that he’s fallen asleep, he says: “I kissed you, you know.”

“Um. . .yeah.”

“You were thinking that you’re glad that you were the first person to kiss me. But you weren’t. I kissed you.”

“You’re right. Sorry for getting it wrong—even in my thick, dull thoughts. Which I never invited you into.”

He turns his head to study me. My shoulders rise with anticipation, but his expression does not betray whatever he’s actually feeling. “You aren’t dull. A bit thick, yes. But never dull. And you love it when I read your mind.”

I can’t help my smile. “Right again.”

I sigh and tug at his pajama pants. “Can I take these off? Just for sleep. I’m so tired. Aren’t you tired?”

He closes his eyes and nods. “Yes.”

I shuck the fabric from his long legs, which deserve hours of careful study and attention. It’s amazing how easy it’s become for me to touch him like this, with a more sincere intimacy than we ever had before. I’ve always felt a sort of selfish propriety over his body, but now it’s ingrained—I’ve come to expect to be able to arrange him and caress him as I wish. Well. Almost as I wish. The idea of anyone else even attempting the same makes the veins in my eyes throb murder.

When my head hits the pillow, he rolls back into me immediately, and I scoop him up so that our bare ankles entwine and our pulses rest against each other. If my traitorous cock plumps a bit against the plush haven of his gluteal cleft, he doesn’t mention it.

 

SHERLOCK

There’s always something.

It was hubris to expect that simply informing John of his wife’s infidelity might cause him to return my inexorably inconvenient feelings. Of course it wasn’t enough. Ordinary people are insufferable optimists, with their unwavering faith in such failed institutions as marital counseling and apologies and forgiveness.

Ordinary people also tend to be unrelentingly heterosexual.

So we’ve spent a few blissful hours in the sun of each other’s embrace. So last night he set down a corona of kisses on my exhausted, unworthy head as he allowed me to cling to him like the anchor I am. He’s a doctor. A caretaker. An incredible friend. And he does love me, oh yes—as a soldier loves his commanding officer. As a dog loves his boy.

The erection digging into my bum, now, in the grey morning light, is merely a biological response to a near, familiar body. It has nothing to do with the lingering seconds that he returned, almost imperceptibly, the pressure of my lips with his own.

“Mm. Hey.” To my welcome surprise, he pulls me further into his arms and rubs his nose into the nape of my neck. As consciousness seeps past his eyelids into the slow, easy clockwork of his brain, I can feel his embarrassment take root almost as if it were my own. He freezes and, with such a failed attempt at subtlety that I could almost laugh, retreats from where he’s been gently rutting against my thin cloth of my pants.

“Wow. So, um. Sorry. I’ll just. . .yeah. Loo.”

This tips me into a full scale giggle that I try to press into the sheets.

“Could you just. . .do me a favor and. . .keep looking that way. You utter prat. Thanks.”

If I were really the inspiration for his penile tumescence, I wouldn’t be laughing. But as I burn Mycroft’s most recent text into my retinas to the strains of shower spray and creaking pipes, I consider that it might be the last time I feel like grinning for a long time.

_Assignment moved up to tonight. Team in place. Operation Silk Road is go._


	3. Chapter 3

JOHN

Shit fuck piss bloody god fucking damn it.

Christ. What must he think of me?

He’d hate it if he knew that I’m worried about alarming him with sex, as if he doesn’t know anything about it. I know he does. Too much, for someone who hasn’t ever received a direct demonstration of how good it can be. What a fucking travesty, that no one’s ever inhaled a line along the curve of his hamstring to his iliac crest and breathed him in there, at the juncture of leg and hip.

What a crime that soon someone might, and that it won’t be me.

Will he ever let me touch him again?

The idea of him unfolded and smiling and willing, mineral gaze unfocused with simple, easy desire for me, of all sodden people, curls around my cock along with my hand and leads me to a frantic, hard, guilty crisis all over the old green tile.

He’s pacing in his bedroom. I can hear him prowling through the door. Tapping at his phone. If I were him, I could weigh the force of his steps and measure the rate and quality of his exhalations in order to deduce his inner state: agitated, irritated, panicked. Bored. Amused.

I open the en suite door a crack.

“Pass me my jeans?”

He looks up at me from the screen glowing in his palm. Inscrutable as ever—or, no. His eyes are wide, his features carefully relaxed. He looks like he did when Magnussen stood in the sitting room and pissed in the fireplace. The knowing, smug eyeshine I always look for when we’re out of our element isn’t there, and I know we’re fucked this time. There’s no trick up his sleeve.

Without a word, he tosses the article to me, and I catch it. Five years (minus two interrupted) and I’ve never missed a thing he’s thrown to me.

“And my shirt?”

 

After the bike-frayed cuffs have been rolled up and the fold creases smoothed, I level a look at the mirror.

It’s my face. The laugh lines of a father. The creased forehead of a soldier. The grim mouth of a doctor. The sure, surrendered gaze of a lover; of someone besotted and gone. Too far gone to ever go back.

I say, to myself, and to him if he’s listening at the door: “I need to talk to Mary.”

When I emerge, clad in what little armor I have left, he’s gone.

 

 

SHERLOCK

I didn’t dream in John’s arms.

No blood or brine. No dog teeth. Static, cool and simple.

“I need to talk to Mary.”

Of course you do. Go on, then. Tell her that you forgive her. There’s always a chance that one day you will, isn’t there? You’ll look up from across a table spread with things for a two year old’s birthday party, and you’ll see her haloed by pink streamers like a sensibly coiffed angel in comfortable shoes. You’ll think, ah, yes. This is the woman for me. Here is the mother of my child, gilded with the right sort of secrets.

 

JOHN

My texts go unanswered on the tube back to Layla and Mary.

_Where did you go?_  
Are you all right?  
Can I see you later? Tonight?  
Damn it, Sherlock, I’m here. Talk to me.  
I’m sorry for this morning.  
Body betrayed me. 

 

“No need to ask where you’ve been,” says Mary in the kitchen, unloading groceries from cloth tote bags.

“Do you do deductions now?”

“Please.”

“Well, here’s one: I know that you haven’t been volunteering for any suicide hotline.”

“That’s _your _deduction, is it?”__

__“Does it matter?”_ _

__She raises her hands and drops them again. “Fine. Now you know. Layla and I weren’t in Brighton this weekend, either. But am I really the only one, John? Who keeps going back to someone else?”_ _

__“No.”_ _

__She purses her lips. “How is he doing?”_ _

__“Not great.”_ _

__She nods, brows pinched. “We can share custody, you know. I wouldn’t keep Layla from you.”_ _

__“That’s it, then?”_ _

__“Isn’t it?_ _

__I suppose it is._ _

__She presses a cool palm to my jaw. My knuckles ache and crack within clenched fists._ _

__“I’m glad that it ends like this.” She doesn’t blink. It seems like she’s blinked less and less since I watched her shrug Mary from her shoulders and shoot a coin with A.G.R.A.’s gun. “Simply. There’s been far too little of that in my life.”_ _

__She kisses my cheek. “He said that I deserve you, but we all know who truly does. And I think that right now, you need to prove that you deserve him, too.”_ _

__

___Fifteen. I’ve called fifteen times in the past two hours. I’m beginning to feel as mad as I must look._ _ _

___Please answer me._ _ _

___I’m coming over. I’ve brought a few of my things. Mary and I talked, like I said we would._ _ _

___Where the FUCK are you? WHY AREN’T YOU HOME?_ _ _

___I love you. If you are where I think you are, I won’t hold back. I’ll kill him. I’ll kill Mycroft. I’d kill everyone but Layla on this miserable planet if it meant having you to myself. I am not right. I am insane._ _ _

___I’m coming to you, Sherlock._ _ _

__

__SHERLOCK  
Between the milk-white blanks of deletions and asphalt static of cocaine fugues, it’s impossible to determine how many personas I’ve assumed since I began taking cases. Enough battle armor to clothe the entire Network has enabled me to slip by, unseen, into lives that aren’t my own; to inspire timely betrayal and tearful confession. I’ve schooled my face into every possible expression of human emotion. The art of disguise is, of course, hiding in plain sight._ _

__No one I have ever been is enough to prepare me for this task._ _

__Cosgrove Gentry’s townhouse is appointed with reasonable discretion at the juncture of two narrow streets. The marble of ionic pillars—gaudy, but not enough to draw attention—looks blissfully cool in the thick mauve evening. An urge to rest my cheek against its surface grips my innards with a childish hand._ _

__It’s just a bit of turgid flesh. A sticky-swollen topographical feature to be scaled._ _

__It’s just the dank tunnel of a (wet, hellishly wet) bullfrog mouth._ _

__The door opens before I raise my hand to knock. Cameras, of course. Saw them immediately in the mouth of the plaster lion and in the strands of ivy slung round the bulletproof windows. Their placement is strategic, but there are at least three possible ways out of the house that would allow one to evade them, if necessary._ _

__A diminutive man opens the door. His large, round green eyes have the telltale glaze of a sex worker—not a point of deduction I’d add to an police report, if I were to ever write one, but a gut feeling that I know to be on the mark._ _

__“Mr. Holmes,” he says without quite meeting my eyes. “Mr. Gentry is waiting in his study. Do come in.”’_ _

__

__Most spiders take the time to lure bait into their cutthroat, criminal webs, favoring nods to national customs and comforts—namely, the offer of tea. It the sort of British tradition that caused Magnussen to declare this nation “domesticated,” as if that were the gravest of insults._ _

__Cosgrove Gentry, as I’d gathered from Mycroft’s briefing, is no spider. Just an old bulldog: round-headed and brutal and toothed. His hands are incongruously fine-boned. They twitch with a clever energy, the nails grown slightly overlong._ _

__“Ah, Mr. Holmes,” he says when he turns to me in his painstakingly obscene cave of a study. Starkly composed photographs of bound wrists and ankles line the walls beneath elaborate crown moulding, sculpted into scenes of satyrs in pursuit of nymphs. Various barbed metal instruments rest in neat stacks beside a handsome mahogany desk. There are creases in the wallpaper behind a grotesquely phallic lamp: a connecting chamber with a hidden door._ _

__“I make no secret of my. . .recreational interests,” he remarks as he follows the path of my gaze. “Secrecy is reserved for the nature of my professional life, not my private pursuits. You’ve come here to discuss the former, but allow me to say from the outset that I’ll be sorely disappointed if I don’t at least whet your interest in what you see here before you go.” The folds of his face crease, exposing a rotted out smile that is shocking to see on a man of no doubt impressive financial means. An incisor is missing; the other shines gold. His dark eyes are dull, nearly eclipsed by the flesh gathered at their edges and in pockets beneath them._ _

__To kiss that mouth. . ._ _

__Prison suddenly seems like a welcome prospect, but at this point failure would almost certainly mean death, and John would resent me if I gave in to that outcome.  
I pray that the sheen of sweat on my upper lip suggests an aroused glow._ _

__Gentry extends a single finger in the direction of two leather armchairs arranged before a fireplace framed by two erect marble cherubs, which point real arrows into the room._ _

__I pour myself into a chair in a manner that I hope might be construed as seductive. At the very least, it serves to camouflage the increasing tremor in my hands.  
He settles across from me with a rustle of fabric against straining flesh. “So. You’re here to discuss heroin.”_ _

__My tongue is lead in my mouth. I nearly give myself away with a heavy swallow. “There have been a slew of cases involving both smugglers and dealers, at least some of whom are employed by you.”_ _

__“Oh? I don’t recall hearing anything like that. And I’m an avid consumer of the news.” He gesticulates with one shapely hand. “Perhaps you’ll oblige me by elaborating.”  
“Certainly.” Mycroft’s people have done their research, of course. I provide the highlights in a monotone that, to a keen observer, might suggest the truth: that for the first time in my adult life, I practiced lying in front of a mirror._ _

__“Jones? Yes, that was a rather nasty affair. It’s never wise to skim off the top of my product, Mr. Holmes, as I imagine you’ve already inferred. Heaven knows you don’t miss much.” He leans forward in his chair, and I grit my teeth as I haven’t since I last felt the sting of a whip and the bite of manacles. (Or, no—since John’s wedding. Which is the very essence of not good.) “I’m afraid I’ve brought you here under false pretenses, Mr. Holmes. You see, I happen to know a great deal about you.”_ _

__A strand of dark spittle lands beneath my cheekbone. The stench of pipe tobacco and poor dental hygiene is overwhelming, and my every neuron must unite to resist the urge to wipe my face, excuse myself, vomit, find a cab, strip, and douse myself in water treated with the largest survivable measure of bleach._ _

__“Do you. . .do you indeed, Mr. Gentry?”_ _

___He sinks five fingernails into the crown of my knee. “One could even say I’m a bit of a fan. You’ve had those before, haven’t you?”  
“I. . .”  
“James Moriarty was many things, but in the end that was what most defined him. Being your fan.” Gentry licks the bunched flesh around his mouth. “The games you two played! I relished his every account, on the occasions that he visited this humble abode to discuss business. I assure you, however, Mr. Holmes, that I can provide diversions that James Moriarty couldn’t even conceive of. He may have made a fine enemy, but I—I am the greatest ally you can hope to make in this city.” His gaze drifts toward my mouth. To regulate my breathing, I count the visible vessels in his bulging sclerae. His breath hits my suprasternal notch in hot, rancid puffs. “I could be the best you’ve ever had.”_

__“I’ve never had much use for allies. Too many loose ends.” The high back of the chair prevents me from reclining my neck away from the swollen face before me.  
“Oh, come now, Sherlock.” His voice has taken on a singsong quality that is unmistakably reminiscent of his former employer. “Do give me some credit. I have my eyes and ears around the city, too.”_ _

__“What do you mean?” The words escape in a slur._ _

__“That soldier fellow of yours, of course. He’s an ally, isn’t he? And that handsome D.I. Sometimes I can’t decide who to envy more—you, for keeping the company of such luscious specimens, or them, for having access to the most supremely eligible man in London.”_ _

__“Eligible for what, exactly?” I am aware that any feeble notions I harbored about my ability to seduce this man are fleeting as rapidly with the meagre contents of my stomach, but that doesn’t seem to be a deterrent._ _

__“For playing. With me. Would you like to play, Mr. Holmes?”_ _

__NonevernofuckfucknoNONONO._ _

__“Why, Mr. Gentry, I expected a bit more foreplay. You could at least humor the pretense of my visit.”_ _

__“I’m not a patient man, sir.” My vision has blurred (compounded by an inner chant of don’tpanicdon’tpanicdon’tpanic and a grappling in my mind palace for the sensation of John holding me from behind, solid arms wrapped around my chest, perfect hands cupping my hips, haysweet scent in my nose and kindest voice in my ear), and I’ve failed to notice the coil of linen rope that has materialized in Gentry’s oily grip. He holds it between his palms and cracks it._ _

__

__

__JOHN_ _

__Mycroft Holmes is not at The Diogenes Club._ _

__I know because after I stood in that room of silent old tossers and shouted a summons at top volume, the security blokes who escorted me out had the courtesy to say he isn’t expected there this week._ _

__On cue, a long black car appeared on the pristine gravel where I was deposited outside the building._ _

__His house is the expected palatial affair, but I don’t have time to be impressed by my target before I throttle him._ _

__“WHERE IS HE?”_ _

__Mycroft looks up from a stately oak desk with an expression of what might be genuine surprise. Ah, good—I can still shock you, motherfucker. You have no idea what I’m capable of._ _

__A spasm of understanding crosses his glacial features. “Now, John, before you proceed—“_ _

__“No. I have no use for whatever you could possibly have to say to me. He’s your brother, Mycroft. And he’s terrified. I know that he’s in legal trouble—a lot of trouble—but how could you force him into _this_?”_ _

__Mycroft’s stance turns appraising, and it takes military-honed control to keep myself from bashing his smug head in._ _

__“Is this about guilt, John? Do you harbor grand visions of rescuing Sherlock from the consequences of a choice he made with your welfare in mind?” He does not quite leer, and something in his tone suggests that perhaps he is feeling something about this, after all: anger, at me, for leading his brother down the fraught road to sentiment and caring. “How is Mary? The baby? It seems to me that you’re a bit late to play hero to Sherlock’s damsel in distress. I rather thought you’d made your choice.”  
My left hand shakes with the awful truth of it._ _

__“No. I—love him. I don’t expect you, of all people, to understand. Whatever I’ve done—however late it is—I love Sherlock. You will tell me where he is.”_ _

__Mycroft nods once, slowly, his chin bunched and his eyebrows drawn together._ _

__“Very well. I can’t promise you any form of diplomatic immunity, should you commit violence. But I will go with you.”_ _

__

__

__SHERLOCK_ _

__Irene Adler and I are not friends, but she left me with more than she took._ _

__“Come now, Sherlock,” says Cosgrove Gentry. Rope whispers between fine fingers and then crack crack cracks. “There needn’t be a struggle. This could be as simple as a business transaction.”_ _

__“And what, exactly, would we be exchanging?”_ _

__“You underestimate me. A common, fatal mistake.” He retrieves a matchbox-sized ivory box from his breast pocket. “You’re after information. If I so chose, I could coerce you into all manner of acts with the promise of divulging that information. In fact, I could send you away with far more than MI6 expects to find in my humble study. You’d be a hero to queen and country.” He holds the box in an outstretched palm and taps it once. “It’d certainly be enough to help erase the memory of one unfortunate little murder.” He taps the box again. “But I hardly need go through the trouble, because you’ll do it for this: the finest Columbian cocaine available anywhere. It’ll make your lovely veins sing so sweetly, you’ll be begging me for our next playdate. Whether I’ll oblige depends upon your performance this evening.”_ _

__Mycroft must truly be slipping, if he’s sent me after a target so well informed as this one. Informed, if a bit simple. As though a bit of coke could bear any weight in comparison to my real drug of choice: the sunlight and grass of John’s hot skin against mine._ _

__I force my eyes open as wide as possible. Like saucers, Mummy used to say, when she first taught me how to pretend. “Oh, Mr. Gentry. You have done your research.” I lean forward, trying not to hold my breath, and close my fingers around the syringe in the pocket of my jacket. “Very well. How do I play?”_ _

__

__

__JOHN_ _

__“Let me be exceedingly clear.” Mycroft’s hands are folded in his lap, as if we were en route to a matinee of some opera. “You will allow our operatives to infiltrate. If you attempt to take matters into your own hands, I will not hesitate to arrest you.”_ _

__“Okay. If,” and even I pick up on the slight flinching shift of his shoulders at the metal in my voice, “they agree to get him out now. Right now. No reviewing cameras to find out if the mission is progressing in a way that you lot deem satisfactory.”_ _

__“There are no cameras in Gentry’s office. His security is relatively airtight—if it weren’t, there would no need for Sherlock’s involvement at all.”_ _

__“Then I don’t give a fuck what sort of position you’ll be forced into. I will flee the country with Sherlock if it means stopping him from putting that man’s cock down his throat.” I am not proud of the pitch of my voice, and my left hand clenches repeatedly. “He can’t stomach even incidental contact with men, Mycroft. Since everything with Magnussen.”_ _

__Mycroft, for the first time in our acquaintance, adopts an expression that chills my blood and causes me to falter just a bit. “Ignoring the obvious absurdity of your suggestion that I couldn’t find and extract you from anywhere on Earth—are you’re sure he’d go with you?”_ _

__I shake my head. “No. But if you didn’t want me to go after him, you wouldn’t have brought me here.”_ _

__

__

__SHERLOCK_ _

__Gentry’s features blur out of focus as he looms before me: a mottled, fleshy canvas, all swollen purple tones._ _

__Corridors of my mind palace press into grey matter on all sides, offering sordid glimpses through unending door frames: Magnussen’s mocking gaze, almost as flat in life as in death; his damp hands tracing the spaces between my limp fingers, as if they were things to be acquired and collected; Mycroft’s expression when I was arrested, Magnussen’s corpse at my feet; John’s pursed lips when he thought he’d lost me for a third time._ _

__I might be drowning—there is no air to be had in the inches between Gentry’s face and mine. The corridors begin to whiten and dissolve, and I’m vaguely aware that I may lose consciousness to my own excessive gasping before I’m able to strike._ _

__A faint sensation of something—cord, string, ligature: the rope—slips over my left wrist as Gentry draws my right out of my pocket. The syringe is tucked against my palm.  
“Oh, Mr. Holmes,” Gentry sighs in a gust of foul air, “you did come to play, after all. What clever thing have you got there, in your pretty grasp?”_ _

__With a fluid, rapid motion, I find arms twisted behind my me, back crushed to his chest. He presses my palm lightly and it uncurls around its prize, feeling less like a limb than a numb, distant extension of my failing transport. Shame darkens the edges of my already greying vision._ _

__“Ah ah,” he says, yellowed eyes fixed upon the same paralytic agent that Adler used on me when we met. “How disappointing. I must say that after my extensive study of your exploits, I expected something more diverting. Perhaps my obsession has been misplaced.” He tightens the rope and executes a complex shibari knot with practiced ease. “But I suppose you’re still rather pretty, and you’ve been kind enough to provide your own means of sedation.”_ _

__“Not on your fucking life.”_ _

__Gentry tugs my arms into a shockingly painful incline as we both look toward the source of the interruption. Between the columns of the doorframe stands an apparition of everything I’ve ever wanted and craved and, yes, occasionally fought for: John Hamish Watson with a gun._ _

__Said gun is aimed at Gentry’s head, and John’s eyes are a switchblade. “If you don’t release him, I will kill you.”_ _

__Gentry exposes the soil-colored ridges of his lower teeth. “Ah, Dr. Watson. I am such a fan of your blog. Won’t you join us? We were about to begin.”_ _

__John walks slowly into the room, sights trained on Gentry’s temporal lobe. The shine and heat of him make the air more breathable, and my inhales become fuller, slower, more complete, to the point where I can think again, and the sudden influx of comprehension staggers me as surely as a blow to the face._ _

__“JOHN,” I shout, “BEHIND YOU.”_ _

__The gaunt sex worker who greeted me appears from behind a door and lassoes John’s neck. John stumbles backward, hand at his throat, tearing at the restraint with weakening muster. Just as I am certain that this is it—that whatever deductive prowess and alleged genius I once possessed has now abandoned me entirely, and that I’ve failed John and myself for a bitter final time— the sound of a gunshot rips through the room, and the sex worker crumples to the ground._ _

__“Release him at once,” a voice that is not John’s commands. A voice that I associate, against my will, with whispered recitations of the periodic table when, as a child, I couldn’t sleep. For once, Mycroft stands with his weight evenly distributed on the floor—no brolly or dandy’s cane to lean against. “On pain of an army, which I could have at your door at the literal snap of my fingers.”_ _

__Gentry glances from the nozzle of John’s gun, which has returned to a place mere centimeters from the point between his eyes, to the fierce line of Mycroft’s mouth as he stands above the corpse of Gentry’s houseboy. From behind my torso, I feel the sick heat of his body recede, and the rope that had been tied with the intention of cutting off bloodflow loosens. I draw breath in rapidly but steadily, and rub at the scarlet marks on my wrists._ _

__Without looking, I know that Gentry has raised his fat arms in a gesture of surrender. Various MI6 agents swarm silently into the room, tapping at the creases in the wallpaper and rifling through papers. Mycroft steps around the chairs and places Gentry in handcuffs without saying a word._ _

__John’s eyes meet mine. He absently rubs at his throat. I attempt to rise from the chair and fail utterly. When I rub at my tear ducts, my skin comes away scored with wetness. John stumbles toward me; I open my arms and he falls onto his knees and into my chest, chin landing in the crook of my neck. “I’m sorryI’msorryI’msososososorry,” he mutters, his voice harsh and damp._ _

__My hands cradle the back of his head and thumb over the red stripe on his neck; he presses gentle kisses to my the raw, marked skin of my wrists._ _

__“For what?” My breaths are as heavy as sobs. “You came for me. You came for me.”_ _

__Darkness lifts from my veins as Gentry is dragged from the room. John cups my jaw and presses a full, shallow kiss to my mouth. Sunlight streams through slats in my brain and my nose fills with the honey scent of hay. “Come on,” he says, holding me around my waist and lifting me to my feet. “Let’s go home. Please let me take you home.”_ _

__

__

__JOHN_ _

__On the ride to 221b, Sherlock stares out the window of Mycroft’s personal Rolls, the pads of three fingers pressed to his lips. Mycroft himself is knee-deep in the messy untangling of the business with Gentry, but before closing the car door, he mutters in my ear, “I trust no one with him like I trust you, John. I know you’ll take good care of him. Don’t hesitate to request anything at all.”_ _

__I clapped him on the shoulder. “Whether on pain of an army or not—you know I would die for him.”_ _

__He nodded shortly and shut the door behind us._ _

__My hands clench and twist in my lap with a deep-veined, base need to touch Sherlock, check him over, eliminate enemy scent and replace it with my own. But until invited, I will not. Patients suffering from psychological trauma react unpredictably. They must be handled with care. It could be that he doesn’t want to be touched by anyone for months. Something squirms in my thoracic cavity at the thought, but if that’s what he needs, so be it. I’ll stand guard over him until he decides. . .whatever he’ll decide._ _

__“For God’s sake, John.” He reaches into my spastic lap and engulfs my left palm with his right. Instantly, the mounting buzz of panic recedes, and I can focus on not rubbing my face against his hand and kissing every centimeter. He does not look at me as he says, “The sheer volume of your thinking is giving me a migraine.”_ _

__I don’t respond for fear that anything I say might emerge as a sob, so we spend the next several moments in silence, pulse points throbbing hotly in our entwined grips._ _

__

__I’ve seen him through the aftermath of serial killers who spoke of the exact bodily meridians along which they’d vivisect him; the discovery of children half-starved and filthy in the trunks of cars, abandoned by their abductors, who were often their own parents; various death threats, both written and verbal, and people saying “freak” in a variety of ways. Rarely has he given any sign of being affected—a slight furrow to his brow or heaviness to his step has reliably lifted in response to my limited tools of tea and stilted conversation. If I were feeling brave in the old days, I’d sometimes lay a hand on his shoulder as I passed him after a particularly harrowing case, and he’d absently rest his cheek against my fingers._ _

__But there were other times that I failed to pay attention to more obvious fault lines of hurt as they cracked his cool carapace. Or worse, that I willfully ignored them, out of fear of what they might mean. I needed him to be invincible, so I failed him at Baskerville. I failed him in the days before he fell, though whether it might have changed the course of things, I have no idea. The vague possibility that it might have has kept me up with wet eyes and a cramped stomach most nights since he came back. I failed him when I got married. I failed him when I moved into the house of an assassin, and when I went back there after said assassin shot him in the chest.  
I’d sooner die than fail him now._ _

__

__

__SHERLOCK  
All that matters is the smell. That is, getting it off._ _

__John shines so brightly beyond the lingering stench of Gentry, but as long as particles of old tobacco and rancid, slovenly flesh cling to my clothes and olfactory passages, I am sealed in by an atmosphere that John’s worried face cannot filter through._ _

__The stairs to 221B seem steeper than ever before. The horror of allowing something that Gentry touched into the flat seems unfathomable, so I begin to strip on the sixth step, popping several buttons and heaving my jacket and shirt toward the bottom of the landing._ _

__“Leave it,” I say as John looks at the pile with a perplexed expression. My trousers, socks and shoes sail past his shoulder. “We’ll burn it all later.”_ _

__“What’s all this, Sherlock?” Mrs. Hudson has appeared in her doorway, gazing up at me with a depth of concern than I’ve only seen when she fussed over me in the hospital just after I was shot._ _

__The temptation to be short is strong, and she would forgive me, as she always does. But John is behind me, and even through the scrambled mire of my consciousness, an impulse rings out to _make him stay, be good and maybe he’ll stay.__ _

__“Not to worry, Mrs. Hudson. I’m in the hands of the most qualified medical professional in London.” When this only serves to deepen her frown, I try again: “I’ll. . .come talk to you later. All right?”_ _

__Her expression grows suspicious, as if I’ve been replaced by a polite doppelganger._ _

__“Oh, for God’s sake.” I push open the door and leave John to mutter additional platitudes before he follows me in._ _

__I stand in the living room in nothing but my pants for three full breaths before he clears his throat._ _

__“What—“_ _

__“Shower.” With numb fingers, I slip the remaining scrap of tainted material from my legs and ankles. Most men in John’s position might not know where to look, but despite his obvious discomfort, his gaze is steady, ready to meet mine. “Join me?”_ _

__He looks relieved and nods once, his eyes a forest fire, as they are when he follows me into certain danger._ _

__

__

__I briefly weigh the discomfort of using a pumice stone to methodically strip my body of its first epidermal layer against the disgust that sits tight in my belly and stains me inside and out._ _

__The water scalds me sweetly. My thoughts drift through the rising steam toward dark, snarling shapes with phosphorous eyes. The warm shock of John’s wet skin disperses toothed shadows as he tentatively embraces me from behind._ _

__“Okay?”_ _

__I can’t quite meet his eyes as I nod. “Please.”_ _

__He presses forward, surrounding me, fingertips meeting just below my ribcage, chest flat and warm against my back. His penis is not quite flaccid where it fits into the crack of my arse. Like before, it’s comfortable, as if he were made to slot in right there._ _

__He guides my head to his shoulder, and I close my eyes, enveloped by the welcome scorch of flesh and water. He presses a kiss to the space between my brows, and only then do I begin to feel clean._ _

__“Hand me that.” He takes a cake of soap from me and begins to caress my chest and stomach with circular motions that are not explicitly sexual, but very, very soothing. The stiff, numb, black feeling of disgust that has felt grainy under the surface of my skin begins to melt, slips down my ankles with the water. If I were to look down, I am almost sure that I would see silty streaks swirling toward the drain._ _

__His breath stutters as his hands slip between my legs and find my penis sanguine and alert. He cups my testicles and strokes behind them, which causes me to inhale sharply; a single pull down my shaft feels perfunctory, but his fingers linger near the head, and his breathing has grown uneven._ _

__“Turn around,” he whispers._ _

__“Anything,” I say, “as long as you keep touching me.”_ _

__“You’d be hard pressed to get me to stop,” he exhales. “I will, of course. Any time you say. But as long as you’ll let me, I’m gonna keep you right here.”  
I turn in the circle of his arms._ _

__He places his thumb beneath my lip, like he did before I kissed him. His other hand strokes along my shoulder and neck before firmly cradling my jaw.  
As little as I want to question the proceedings, there is a chance that if this is all a grotesque display of sympathy, I may never recover._ _

__“So. . .Mary. And you. And not. Gay.”_ _

__His gaze does not waver. “Mary and I are sharing custody of Layla. We’re in the process of sorting papers. She didn’t deny the affair with David, and you know, and to be honest, I hardly feel like a model of fidelity.” He shifts his feet a bit—uncomfortable—but keeps his eyes on mine. “As for not gay, well. I’m not. And I’m not straight, either. Seems like enough to be going on with, right?”_ _

__I nod. Droplets of water catch the light as they drip from the darkened gold of his lashes and slide down his cheeks. “Bisexual, then. Should have deduced it. . .somewhere along the way.”_ _

__“Ah, well. I didn’t make it easy. And I suppose we all have our blind spots.”_ _

__“Mm, yes.”_ _

__“So, the question is, then: do you actually want this? Me, specifically. I won’t pretend that I’d not be heartbroken if you didn’t, but I don’t matter here. All I want is for you to have what you need. Whatever you want.”_ _

__I cover the hand on my jaw with my own. “Of course you matter. You’re all that matters. Didn’t you hear Magnussen and his cryptic prattling about pressure points? He meant you, John. Moriarty, too. And they were right.” I lean in to speak the next words into his mouth. “I want you more than I’ve ever known how to want anything. A terrifying amount. You’re in my blood. You’re waging war for me in my dreams. I think I might burn the world down to keep you. I think I might not think twice about it.”_ _

__He stares at me for so long, fingers alternately gripping and stroking the ridge of my jaw, that I’m unsure of whether or not he’ll do anything else. And why should he? All that has led us to this point can be explained with chemistry and basic psychology. He held me as we slept and woke with an erection because he sought to comfort me, like the miraculous friend he is, and succumbed to a biological impulse in the process. He joined forces with my brother, whom he despises, because he has always been protective of me, felt a sense of propriety over me. He is my blogger and my bodyguard—this was no different than the time he shot Jefferson Hope, or threatened to kill the Golem, or offered himself to Moriarty’s snipers in exchange for my life. He kissed my wrists and mouth when he found me because he had worried, reasonably, that I was in danger of being drugged and raped—possibly killed—and wanted to reassure himself of my breath and pulse, given that I have died on him before. He sent me a slew of texts before he arrived that included the phrases “I love you,” “I’d kill everyone on this miserable planet except Layla if it meant having you to myself,” “I’m coming to you, Sherlock,” because. . .because. . ._ _

__The heat of the water has begun to stutter; it will be completely cold within seventy eight seconds. John nods, stands on his toes, and covers my mouth with his.  
It’s different this time, with him in control. He breathes into my mouth, and I inhale, so that my lungs fill with oxygen that has traveled along his circulatory system. I have the irrational yet distinct notion that he’s filling me up with light, so that it shines out of my mouth, my ears, the corners of my eyes. His hands encircle my waist, arms crossing at my lower back, so that we are curved together as an arc, his face tilted up to meet mine. We share breath again, so that I am gloriously lightheaded from a lack of fresh air (don’tcaredon’tcarebreathingisboringcouldn’tpossiblycare), until he tilts his head, opens his mouth wide to allow us both a bit of oxygen, and then slips his tongue into my mouth._ _

__The wet—the tactile sensation of tastebuds gliding along my own, imparting a lingering taste of metallic anxiety—it shouldn’t be the superb melange of spark and need that I’m suddenly subsumed by, unable to surface from and never wanting to. But it is. It feels collaborative, rather than threatening. Encompassing—not smothering. Safe. The hand on my jaw moves into my hair and holds me in a luscious grip, so that I am at the mercy of John’s gentle, unrelenting exploration of my lips, my hard palette, even the backs of my teeth._ _

__He draws back, gently bites my lower lip, and appears to be intent on charting my neck when the water runs cold._ _

__He takes in a sharp breath, vision unfocused, and then he laughs, head thrown back and eyes closed. It’s the fullest, most genuine John laugh I’ve heard since before I fell, and my low responding chuckle sounds delicate, like it might break into sobs._ _

__“Come on,” he says, and leads me out of the tub by the hand._ _

__He dries me off methodically—reverently, in truth. He slips soft terry cloth between my fingers; he lifts each of my feet, dries along the arch of my foot and between each of my toes. My penis hardens further when he (almost chastely, again, but with a hint of intention) runs the towel over my stomach and groin. I’m impressed with my own transport’s eager response, and then am struck by embarrassment that I know is irrational, given that John has been fully erect since he first kissed me._ _

__“Look at me,” he says, and he means into his eyes, which I do (always did breathe better with a command, as much as I love issuing them—one of my gravest and most secret weaknesses, but safe with John, who has never steered me anywhere I didn’t want to go). The towel falls to the floor as he takes my hand and leads me into my bedroom._ _

__

__

__JOHN_ _

__He hesitates by the bed, flushed and hard and flawless._ _

__I sit and pat the space beside me. He looks at me for a long time—a minute, or maybe five—and then lifts his chin and steps forward. He steps between my legs and guides me down to the sheets, pushing at my chest until I lift my legs and lie horizontally, my head against his absurdly soft pillow. He encircles both of my biceps, one in each long hand, and sets one sharp cheek on my chest._ _

__My hands find his nape and the tangle in the damp curls there. When he doesn’t protest, I slide my palms down to cup his shoulders, then his waist, until I am well and truly holding him._ _

__If it weren’t for the rigid swell pressing into my upper thigh, and the corresponding one cradled by the concave of his navel, this could simply be another experimental touch session. Maybe it is._ _

__But then he pulls himself up my torso, his cock dragging sweetly along my stomach, and lets me see his face. There’s nothing inscrutable there anymore: his eyes are liquid with want and uncertain need, and I think I might get what he means when he says it’s Christmas._ _

__“Kiss me,” I say, stupidly. He licks softly into my mouth; takes his time testing my lower lip with his teeth. He repeats the heavenly slide of soft skin and hard silk against my abdomen, picking up pace very slightly. When he places the pads of his fingers to my scalp and pulls me closer, I tentatively place both palms on the globes of his arse.  
“Mmm,” he says, breaking off the kiss to breathe harshly in my ear._ _

__“Good mm?”_ _

__“Yes, for Christ’s sake. I appreciate how careful you’re trying to be with me, John—I do—but that’s not, ah, what I need right now.”_ _

__“Oh?” I make my voice gravel, the way I’ve always suspected that he rather likes. He groans and reaches behind to press my hands more firmly into his flesh, and grinds against me in a way that makes us both moan._ _

__“Make me sweat. And use your teeth.”_ _

__“Fuck, Sherlock.”_ _

__“Yes, yes, exactly. Fuck Sherlock. Fuck him, roll all over him, make him—“_ _

__“Mine.”_ _

__His pupils are blown so wide it’s almost frightening. “Yeah. That.”_ _

__I don’t need to be asked twice. His thighs are tensed against my hips, so it’s easy to flip him over and press him into the mattress._ _

__“Oh,” he says, eyes closed, mouth a miracle._ _

__He locks his ankles behind my back and throws his wrists around my neck, big hands sunk into my hair. “You know, it’s ironic.” He expels a wispy laugh. The lines around his eyes are fanned out, bemused, and my stomach feels hollow with the knowledge that I can’t gather them to keep forever. “After everything, he hardly even touched me.”  
“And he never will.” I suck in a swathe of his neck and leave an imprint of my teeth. “I swear on my life, whatever that’s worth, that I will shoot anyone who touches you without your permission again. If your brother doesn’t beat me to it.”_ _

__“Ugh.” He opens his eyes, face creased in disgust. “Why would you mention him?“_ _

__I nose into his hair and breathe him in. No sweat: just clean dust and spice. Which is beautiful, but won’t do at all. Only when he can be detected by scent as someone who’s allowed me to touch him—me, of all sodding lucky arseholes—will I begin to feel like there’s enough air in the room. In short, I won’t rest until I find out how he smells when he smells like me._ _

__“To a prove a point.”_ _

__“What point?”_ _

__“That you, Sherlock Holmes—you are so.” I kiss his clavicle. “Fucking.” Lick a line from his sternum to his navel. “Loved.”_ _

__His stomach quakes under my palms, and I glance up to find his lips parted, cheeks stained a gorgeous red. His breathing is fast, but not worryingly so. I hope that my smile is reassuring. This next part is new to me, but after the hours of mental rehearsal I’ve logged, I feel nothing but desire to show him exactly how true that is._ _

__

__

__SHERLOCK_ _

__My work as a chemist has given me a rather focused perspective on the stark beauty present in the universe (even stars)—especially on Earth, especially in London, especially in the area just around and including Marylebone Road. I’ve been known to (quietly) appreciate the aestheticism of a particular molecule of pollen, a smudge of grassy oil, a stray eyelash._ _

__Nothing I’ve ever considered or quantified could have prepared me for the sight of John Watson’s head between my thighs._ _

__No amount of past disinterest in theological speculation can account for the clear sense of belonging that bleeds from the warmth of his palms as they part my legs, their grip wide and possessive. He holds me along the flat of his palm. The microexpressions flitting across his worn, precious features are so reverent that I have to close my eyes. I open them in time to watch him kiss me from base to tip._ _

__“Oh,” I whisper._ _

__“Gorgeous,” he says, even more quietly, and then swallows me down in one go._ _

__It’s not an especially large penis, though I’ve never thought it unappealing. The crease between John’s closed eyes and the leisurely, unbearably sweet pull of his mouth, up and down, gives the impression that it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted. I fold one hand over my eyes to catch the beginnings of wetness at their corners._ _

__He releases me with a kiss to the crown and holds me in his palm, using the slick of his own saliva to stroke me with gentle, insistent pressure. “Okay? Sherlock? Do you want me to stop?”_ _

__It occurs to me that I haven’t made much noise, beyond the shallow hush of my rapid breaths._ _

__“No. No, it’s wonderful.” His thumb across my frenulum makes me gasp._ _

__“You sure? There’s tears in your eyes, sweetheart.”_ _

__“Perhaps you could. . .it’s very, very good, but—I think that if you came back up here, that might be. . .better.”_ _

__“Of course. Oh, of course, of course. Anything you need.”_ _

__He keeps up the rhythm he’s started with his palm, and crawls up my body to kiss me, letting me feel the much more significant length of him against my stomach. He tastes different—good, saline, interesting._ _

__“Maybe I was wrong about careful,” I say when he breaks away to kiss my forehead and between my eyebrows. “I’m—oh, oh, that thing you did with your thumb, that, that—sorry.”_ _

__“Sssh. You’re scaring me. Apologizing and saying that you might have been wrong, in the same sentence?” He returns to my mouth and sucks on my lower lip. “There’ll be plenty of time for a bit of rough later, if that’s what you want. For now, let me try something.”_ _

__He reaches between our bellies without letting me go, and attempts to gather his own cock into his grasp. “Help me,” he says against my lips. “My hand’s not quite. . .”  
“It’s perfect,” I say, voice choked, and wrap my larger hand around his, holding both of us. My first strokes are tentative, but he guides me and whispers instructions, and soon we are both fucking the channel of our joined palms, and it’s infinitely better than anything I knew how to hope for, lying in the dark when I was Dead, pressing a shard of glass into my bicep and imagining his teeth._ _

__He moans into my mouth and I moan back into his, mingling decibels. His other hand grips my hip, my waist, before tracing and lightly pinching one of my nipples.  
“Uhh,” I say, and it’s mortifying, but he whispers, “come on, Sherlock. You’re so fucking perfect. Come for me, now, now.” His voice wells up inside me, breaking over various sharp thresholds, and I do. I come all over our hands and stomachs, and he kisses me through it, mouth tight with emotion._ _

___Even in the midst of my limp, panting aftermath, I keep my hand on him, gently prying his fingers away from his own cock. I pick up speed, kissing his mouth and cheeks and under his eyes. “Oh, fuck, fuck,” he says into my neck, and then the space between us is impossibly wetter and slicker as he comes apart in my arms.  
It should be disgusting, but moving is unthinkable. I can smell us, finally, on the shared terrain of our skin. I smell right. I smell owned, claimed.  
“I love you,” he says as tears slip down my cheeks and into my hair._

__

__

__JOHN_ _

__When I wake up, the room is dark, and Sherlock is murmuring into his phone._ _

__“Yes,” he says. “I know. I will. I’ve already said that I. . .yes. And Mycroft. . .thank you. No, I won’t say it again. Oh, for God’s sake. I’ll speak to you later, when you’ve frozen over again.”_ _

__He dims the phone and gets back into bed carefully, as if worried that he might not be welcome. Which will not do at all._ _

__“I woke you,” he says. He’s lying on his back, staring at the ceiling._ _

__“Mm, yes.” I roll into him, turning him so that I’m slotted along his back, our ankles tangled beneath the sheets. Our skin is still a bit sticky after a half-hearted clean up, and I’m grateful to inhale between his shoulders and smell the story of what we did a few hours ago. “I think I can just about find it in me to forgive you.” He relaxes into me, and I kiss along the edges of every scar I can reach. “And you’re a good brother,” I whisper. “I won’t tell.”_ _

__He reaches back as if to slap my cheek, but instead caresses my earlobe, holding it between his thumb and index finger. “Prat.”_ _

__I laugh and resume mapping his back with my mouth until I fall asleep._ _

__

__

__SHERLOCK_ _

__I’m shaken awake by Mary’s voice, and I don’t know where I am—just that I’ve taken something I shouldn’t have, and there will be consequences. The scar beneath my ribs twinges with fear, and aches with corresponding self loathing. I’ll have to give him back. He’s a father and a husband. There’s still time for apologies, reparations, marriage counseling. . ._ _

__John answers her in his light tenor, and they laugh gently. I recognize Layla’s babble beneath their voices. Why would she bring the baby? To further torment me with the knowledge that I failed to keep my vow? That I’ve cast concern for their family to the wind? Deductions are few and fleeting, and tangle with nausea in my gut._ _

__But then the front door closes, and the distinctive sheen of Mary’s presence is absent from the flat._ _

__John toes open my bedroom door, Layla in his arms._ _

__“Morning,” he says, his smile as broad as I’ve ever seen it. “Someone stopped by to say hello.”_ _

__He sits down on the bed beside me and kisses my temple. Layla squirms a bit in his lap._ _

__“Mary had something come up—an actual work crisis, which I can verify, as I know what it’s about. Hope you don’t mind.”_ _

__He raises his eyebrows, and I know that he’s asked a question, and that it matters very much how I respond._ _

__“Of course not,” I say. I never quite know how to behave around Layla—she changes at an disorienting rate, so that when I finally think I know what will soothe her or make her grin, she has a new set of interests and reactions. The prospect of facing her as a bright, inquisitive toddler fills me with equal parts terror and a foreign sort of excitement. I wonder how she’ll feel about pirates._ _

__“Do you want to hold her?”_ _

__I realize that she’s been reaching toward me with chubby hands, tiny features pinched into an insistent expression that reminds me so much of John that I smile without meaning to._ _

__“All right,” I say, and take her from his lap._ _

__She sets two plump palms on each of my cheekbones and giggles. She touches my mouth and taps on my teeth with her minute fingernails. The warm smell of her reminds me of Redbeard, inexplicably, as it always has, but it’s calming, now; a scent like grass, not yet dried into hay; a smell of pure light._ _

__John grins at us, the creases around his eyes folded beautifully. “I was thinking. . .might seem a bit sudden, and you and I haven’t even talked living arrangements. . .but if I were to move back here—“_ _

__“Of course you’ll move back here. That is, if you want to. I. . .would like that very much.”_ _

__He smiles even wider, watching Layla test the strength of her legs as she bounces in my lap. “Good. Me too. So I was thinking, when I do. . .what would you think about getting a dog? A puppy, maybe, for Layla to grow up with. I never had one as a kid, and I always wanted one.”_ _

__When I don’t answer immediately, he curls up next to me, rests his head on my shoulder. I press my forehead to Layla’s and close my eyes. “Yes,” I say, after several moments. “I think that could be very good.”_ _

__When I dream that night, enclosed in the circle of his arms, it is of sunlight and triumph and the joyful barking of hounds._ _


End file.
